The Adaptability of Tigers In Stressful Times

A year-long monitoring of two radio-collared sub-adults Bittu and Srinivas, has for the first time shed light on how cubs take baby steps to survive in stressful territories.

A year-long monitoring of two radio-collared sub-adult cubs T9 and T10, popularly known as Bittu and Srinivas, has for the first time shed light on how cubs take baby steps to survive in stressful territories dominated by humans and adult tigers to gain enough weight — physical and in terms of might — to throw around in the future.

This is the longest period for which sub-adult male tigers have been monitored through a GPS PLUS radio collar anywhere in the country. Fitted first on March 17 2016 on both the siblings, the collars were replaced with new ones in January (T10) and February (T9), which will hopefully extend the monitoring till the time the two grow into mighty adults able to challenge superior males.

And the results so far have thrown up an interesting journey through thick forests and patchy corridors, streams and rivers, highways and railway tracks and farmlands and human settlements, on different trajectories.

A study by Wildlife Institute of India team led by scientist Bilal Habib, his colleague Parag Nikam, researchers Pallavi Ghaskadvi and Zahidul Hussain and former Pench Tiger Reserve Field Director Srinivas Reddy has shown how the two brothers have survived through these areas living like nomads, often staying at a particular place for just 4-5 days and at least once crossing each other’s paths —which led to T9 (Bittu) getting pushed out.

“We have known dispersing tigers pass through fragmented corridors and survive in non-protected forests and human-dominated landscapes, but this is the first time we have actually been able to track their journey for such a long period. The two tigers siblings were just 21 months old when first radio-collared after they showed the signs of wandering out of the eastern part of UKWS. Today, they are about 32 months old and on the cusp of full adulthood. It will be a short while before they join the league of full-grown dominant tigers living like kings in their chosen areas,” Habib told The Indian Express.

 Today, both already weigh a huge 230 kg, only a tad below their father’s 240 kg. Interestingly, they have also been photographed with females.Starting from UKWS, the two have walked different paths to currently settle in non-protected Bramhapuri territorial forest of Chandrapur district, with T10 also switching between Bramhapuri and Paoni in Bhandara district.

Incidentally, the whole non-protected landscape between UKWS fringes to Bramhapuri, about 100 km apart, has around 27 tigers, perhaps the highest number for such an area anywhere.

The two had first started moving away from their mother (T3, Fairy) together. Initially, they would separate but meet in a few hours’ time.

The separation grew to days and then Srinivas moved to the adjoining Paoni range and returned to the sanctuary after four days.

He then started moving towards the southern part along the mighty Vainganga river, successfully hunting prey.

Bittu, meanwhile, remained confined to his home range. He then followed in his brother’s footsteps to Paoni. During this period, which were monsoon months, Srinivas travelled right up to Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) and returned to Paoni range, covering 320 km in two months.

“Tigers often choose the monsoon to walk around as there is a lot of undergrowth offering cover. And more interestingly, this was the period when a hectic search was on to locate Jai. Yet, nobody noticed the radio-collared Srinivas, showing the tiger’s ability to escape human eye,” Habib said.

This journey was quite like that of his father Jai, who was known to walk from UKWS to Bramhapuri and back, covering a huge area of over 600 sq km, often pairing with as many as four tigresses in these areas.

Srinivas’ tracking revealed interesting facts, like his not staying in a particular area for more than four days, swimming twice across the Vainganga, walking through farms at night and resting in forests in the daytime and generally hunting wild prey.

Bittu had, meanwhile, settled in Paoni but was edged out by Srinivas after he returned there. It was here that Bittu had to start his southward journey. He, however, showed a different character. He rested at night and peak day hours and was active only at dusk and dawn. He travelled along all possible patches — roads, railway tracks, lakes and even village roads. And unlike Srinivas, he was spotted by many villagers.

Ten months after the radio-collaring, Habib’s team was preparing to put the new collar around the cubs’ necks, since the batteries of the first were running out of steam.

“It, however, turned out to be a very difficult task with T9 remaining elusive in Ghodazari forest in Chandrapur district for days. T10 was freshly collared in the Bramhapuri forest,” Habib said.

Habib added: “The study has shown that tigers too could be as adoptable as leopards to the most trying conditions when it comes to their survival. It also prompts us to think in terms of having a conservation strategy for tigers outside PAs. If integrated with the interest of the locals, it could fetch handsome monetary dividends to the latter through conservancy tourism.”

Note : Srimivas was found dead on a Farm near Nagpur electrocuted by Live Wires in 2017.

Only Bittu is the lone survivor at present.

Credits : Indian Express, March 2017 

Second Largest Breeding Population of Indo Chinese Tigers Discovered In Thailand's Forests

The world’s second known breeding population of Indochinese tigers (Panthera tigris corbetti) confirmed in Eastern Thailand’s Dong-Phayayen Khao Yai Forest Complex – a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Remarkable discovery now makes Thailand home to two breeding populations of this tiger subspecies, a significant step toward ensuring their long-term survival in the wild.

Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) and conservation groups Freeland and Panthera have conducted a scientific survey on the tiger population using the ‘photographic capture-recapture’ method, indicating a density of 0.63 tigers per 100 square kilometers.

While conservationists welcome these exciting new findings, they warn of the continued decline of tigers elsewhere in Thailand and across their global range.

Conservationists in Thailand and the country’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) have released scientific findings today that confirm the existence of the world’s second breeding population of Indochinese tigers, and provided the first photographic evidence of tiger cubs in Thailand’s Eastern Forest Complex.

A camera trap survey conducted using the “photographic capture-recapture” method in the country’s eastern Dong Phayayen – Khao Yai Forest Complex (DPKY-FC) during 2016 has revealed a density of 0.63 tigers per 100 square kilometers (~1.63 tigers per 100 square miles ), confirmed a joint statement released today by the DNP, counter-trafficking organization Freeland and global wild cat conservation organization Panthera.

While the scientific data suggests an exceptionally low tiger density — on par with some of the most threatened tiger habitats in the world — the findings, “demonstrate the species’ remarkable resilience given wildlife poaching and illegal rosewood logging present in the Complex,” the statement said.

“The extraordinary rebound of eastern Thailand’s tigers is nothing short of miraculous,” said John Goodrich, one of the world’s leading tiger experts and Senior Tiger Program Director at Panthera.

The new photographic evidence from the DPKY-FC of successful breeding of tigers is the first to surface in over fifteen years, and is a rare conservation win on the way to ensuring the magnificent cat’s long-term survival in the wild. Previously, Thailand was thought to house only one remaining viable breeding population of wild Indochinese tigers, in Huai Kha Khaeng wildlife sanctuary to the west of the country, which was reported to have 35 – 58 individuals as of February 2016. The discovery of this “new” population is the result of months monitoring with specifically-designed camera traps, and weeks of hard trekking through the forest by rangers and conservationists throughout 2016.

“The stepping up of anti-poaching patrols and law enforcement efforts in this area have played a pivotal role in conserving the tiger population by ensuring a safe environment for them to breed,” the Director of the National Parks Division of the DNP Songtam Suksawang said in the statement. “However, we must remain vigilant and continue these efforts, because well-armed poachers still pose a major threat.”

Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2005, the DPKY-FC is one of mainland Southeast Asia’s last contiguous tracts of forest providing adequate habitat for tigers. Thailand’s wild tiger populations have been driven to the brink of extinction chiefly due to habitat loss, rampant poaching, and overhunting of their prey animals. Fewer than 200 wild tigers are thought to remain in Thailand.

The remarkable evidence of breeding in the DPKY-FC bucks the trend of their continued decline elsewhere in the country, except in Huai Kha Khaeng wildlife sanctuary, where the present breeding population is largely due to a ramping up of protection efforts —including an intensive patrolling system — begun in 2005 by the Thai government. In other areas of suitable tiger habitat across Thailand, they have been gradually extirpated.

Worldwide, currently only an estimated 3,000-4,000 tigers remain in the wild, and according to IUCN they now inhabit less than 6 percent of their historical range, which once spanned from Turkey across Asia to Russia’s eastern coast. Listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, breeding populations of wild tigers were thought to exist in thirteen different countries as recently as 2006, but their continued sharp decline now sees them only in eight (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Thailand and Russia). In 2011, the IUCN described the extent of the recent decline of the Indochinese subspecies as “serious” and “approaching the threshold of Critically Endangered.” If wild tigers are permitted to go extinct, “it would be the largest carnivore to do so since the American lion (Panthera leo atrox) died out at the end of the Pleistocene, approximately 10,000 years ago.” John Vaillant wrote in “The Tiger.”

2016 proved a significant year for tigers when conservation group WWF and the Global Tiger Forum announced in April that the world’s tiger population had finally shown an increase after “several decades of constant decline.” The WWF study estimated that in April 2016 there were an estimated 3,890 wild tigers worldwide, up from 3,200 in 2010, when the 13 tiger range countries announced an ambitious commitment to double tiger numbers by 2022.  Several prominent tiger experts and scientists have however disputed the findings, claiming WWF’s report and its implications were “scientifically unconvincing.”

In the same month, the WWF declared tigers in Cambodia “functionally extinct” stating, “there are no longer any breeding populations of tigers left in Cambodia,” largely due to intensive poaching and continued deforestation of Cambodia’s tropical dry forest ecosystems. A reintroduction action plan that will be implemented by the Cambodian government and WWF was also launched  last year.

In Thailand, conservationists are concerned that as illegal Siamese rosewood logging rages on across the entire DPKY-FC, the illegal loggers increasingly pose a deadly threat to the freshly discovered wild tiger population. It is crucial to bolster protection for Thailand’s wild tigers, Kraisak Choonhavan, Freeland’s chairman of the board said in the statement released today, adding, “As long as the illegal trade in tigers continues, they will need protection. Counter-wildlife trafficking starts at the source.”

Thailand has ramped up protection for Siamese rosewood, in June 2015 the DNP formed an elite group of forest rangers called “Hasadin” specifically tasked with curbing the species’ rampant poaching and subsequent degradation of Thailand’s eastern forests. Across the DPKF-FC, officials are deploying new motion-sensor cameras that can send images in almost real-time to an email account, allowing them to keep track of multiple areas at once without having to deploy rangers to those locations.

Keeping connectivity for tigers across Southeast Asia:

Continued illegal logging, ongoing road expansion and encroachment within the Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai Forest Complex saw the World Heritage Committee warn of a potential downgrading of the complex to the “World Heritage in Danger List” in 2015. The Committee is expected to make a decision at its 41st session in July this year. The expansion of Highway 304 – a road that cuts through the DPKY-FC, running between Khao Yai and Thap Lan National Parks, is one of those threats that could lead to a reduction in tiger numbers and occupancy, destroying part of the treasured tiger landscape and affecting their ability to move around within remaining complex area.

Asia’s infrastructure development boom could lead to the creation of 11,000 new kilometers of roads and railways, causing “the unmitigated fragmentation and destruction” of tigers’ habitats and pushing them further to the brink of extinction in the wild, according to a report released by WWF last year. Maintaining strong connectivity between existing or potential habitats for the Indochinese tiger, and many other species that require large areas, such as the Asian elephant, is vital for those species’ long-term survival in an increasingly human-altered landscape.

The planned construction of a major highway linking the Dawei Special Economic Zone in southeast Myanmar to southwest Thailand will bisect remaining forest habitat, home to Indochinese tigers. The highway will cut through a critical corridor running north-south that links up two of the most significant forest conservation landscapes containing key protected areas in tropical Southeast Asia, Thailand’s Western Forest Complex (WEFCOM) and the Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex.

A report released in April 2016 by WWF outlines the key wildlife crossing sites to be preserved or planned along the Dawei highway, using species modeling based on existing camera trap data and expert knowledge of species movement behavior. Kaeng Krachan National Park (within the Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex) —at the southern end of the critical forest corridor — is the largest national park in Thailand at 2,914 square kilometers (1,125 square miles), and is a large swathe of forest habitat with the potential to provide a reintroduction site for tigers.

On today’s confirmation of the world’s second breeding population of Indochinese tigers, Goodrich said: “Thailand’s World Heritage Forest Complex is home to prime forested habitat that, with significant conservation resources, could support eight times as many tigers as it does now. With continued infiltration of rigorous anti-poaching protection, there is no doubt that this population can be fully recovered, burgeoning into a tiger stronghold and serving as a source of life and diversity for depleted tiger populations in Cambodia, Lao PDR and throughout the species’ range.”

Credits : Mongabay News, March 2017