Tigers of Ranthambore & Western India Landscape

[Rishi]

(11-02-2019, 03:03 AM)GreenForest Wrote:

(10-13-2019, 07:23 AM)Rishi Wrote: Atleast 15 Ranthambore tigers can be moved
Brainstorming on tigers for shifting begins in Rajasthan, as officials engaged in selection of tigers, to will be sent to Mukundra, Sariska and Ramgarh.

Funny no brainstorming happening about genetic health of ranthambore tigers. They sent inbred tigers to sariska, mukundra, now they do brainstorming about producing more inbred offsprings. No real effort to save tigers, all about tourism and money.

In the Ranthambore tiger reserve, a popular tourist attraction in northwest India, some 62 individuals, half of them descended from one matriarch, live in genetic isolation in a 1,115 km2 area. Villages surround the reserve, and there are no other tiger populations nearby to seed new genes. Ramakrishnan and her colleagues have seen markers of inbreeding in the genomes of Ranthambore tigers6. In an unpublished study, they have detected regions of over a million base pairs of DNA without variation. In an average tiger, there are 500 variations in every million or so base pairs. If these stretches harbour deleterious alleles, the offspring could have reduced fitness, increasing the risk of local extinction, she says.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03267-z#ref-Cruyff

The genetic diversity issue in Rajasthan tigers definitely deserves more attention. NTCA had pointed out the lack of genetic diversity in the tigers being sent to Mukundara Hills. In 2015 the then Chief Wildlife Wardern of Rajasthan requested NTCA for permission to translocate tigers from Madhya Pradesh & Maharashtra to MHTR, but that went nowhere, probably got bogged in red-tapes.
Only this June I came across a news about Rajasthan looking to bring tiger from MP instead of Ranthambore to Sariska.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Wildlife experts have emphasised the need for developing tiger corridors to facilitate free movement of big cats from the Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve, where they are facing space crunch. A plan was made in 2012-13(<read) but progress has been slow due to technical difficulties & fund crunch. 
One towards the Mukundra Hills Tiger Reserve via Ramgarh sanctuary & another to Kuno in MP via Kailadevi buffers.

The above plan of rebuilding tiger populations at Kumbhalgarh & Ramgarh while bolstering Mukundara & Sariska are part of a plan for the next decade called Vision-2030.

PDF: LOST TIGERS PLUNDERED FORESTS Reply