Human intrusion leading to more leopard attacks, says report

ALOK DESHPANDE

Campaign launched across tribal hamlets near sanctuary explaining dos and don’ts

• Engage people and stakeholders in conservation effort, Forest Department told
• Garbage attracts dogs, which in turn attract the big cats

Buildings and infrastructural activities, ill-treatment by authorities and apathy of human encroachers to the animals inside the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), the only wildlife sanctuary in India adjacent to a large metropolis, is leading to increased conflict between people and leopards, a report published after a year-long project has said.

From 2000 to January 2013, there have been 125 leopard attacks on humans in and around the sanctuary.

The SGNP has 21 leopards, while the population density around it is approximately 20,000 people per kilometre.

The forest authorities have launched a campaign across the tribal hamlets in and around the Park explaining dos and don’ts to the people to avoid attacks. In Maroshi Pada, where an attack took place in January, posters alert people to the threat.

Mumbaikars for SGNP (MfSGNP), the project carried out by the Forest Department, SGNP and Centre for Wildlife Studies, was aimed at identifying the causes of conflict and measures needed to prevent it.

The report stressed the need for the Forest Department to engage with people and various stakeholders to fulfil its mandate to protect the leopards.

Around 103 sq km of the SGNP is nestled within a larger landscape administered by the Thane Territorial Forest Division. The three adjoining forest divisions to Thane are Junner Forest Division (belonging to Pune Forest Circle), Ahmadnagar and Nashik Forest Division (belonging to Nashik Forest Circle). There have been instances when leopards caught elsewhere were released in the SGNP, increasing the big cat population.

The Film City and Aarey Milk Colony, administered by the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), are situated on the fringe of the Park.

“The garbage in Aarey colony is neither picked up by the Municipal Corporation nor by the Aarey management committee. It attracts dogs which are abundant in numbers and easy prey to leopards. When the big cats come to human habitations, naturally conflicts arise, leading to attacks,” said Sunil Limaye, chief conservator of the SGNP.

The leopards have also met with accidents on roads, especially on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway which is close to the forest area. Hotels on the highway dump garbage near the road. This attracts the dogs, which in turn attract leopards. Since 1994, there have been 43 cases of such accidents.

The report mentioned that the landscape of the SGNP was currently spread across several government departments and sub-departments within the Forest Department, which often led to lack of coordination. Vidya Athreya, wildlife expert and one of the contributors to the report, said arbitrary capture and release (of leopards) worsened the problem.

“The conflict was at the peak when the capture was the highest too,” she said.

According to Ms. Athreya, political and public pressure led to more number of capture of leopards.

“People need to understand that they are living in the original habitat of leopards. Unless they accept this reality, the conflict between humans and leopards will continue,” said Mr. Limaye.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/human-intrusion-leading-to-more-leopard-attacks-says-report/article4493482.ece

High alert at tiger-bearing forests in State

NTCA move to counter poaching

• Poaching rampant at Melghat Tiger Reserve
• Body parts of poached tiger recovered

A high alert has been declared in the tiger-bearing forest areas of the State as part of a countrywide exercise. Chief Wildlife Warden V. Gopinathan told The Hindu that the alert had been declared following an advice from the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to step up vigil in such areas.

The NTCA advice to the Chief Wildlife Wardens and other authorities of tiger range States came in the wake of an incident last week in which a tiger was poached at the Melghat Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra. Authorities of the reserve arrested four persons in this connection on Monday.

Rajesh Goyal, Additional Director General of Forests (Project Tiger) and Member Secretary of NTCA, who issued the advice, said that the body parts of the poached tiger could not be recovered and that those arrested had links to an alleged Delhi-based poacher, Ranjit Singh Bhawaria alias Khawalya.

In the wake of the development “it goes without saying that there is a strong possibility of wandering gangs of professional poachers targeting our tiger-bearing forests which in turn calls for due vigil and caution,” Mr. Goyal said in his advice issued on Tuesday.

Mr. Gopinathan said that apart from the two tiger reserves of the State, tigers had been sighted at most of the forests in the State. It meant that a good portion of the State’s forest areas were tiger ranges too. This called for high alert and extra vigil in all forest areas of the State in the wake of the NTCA sounding the alert.

Though the forest areas of Kollam district were not popular as tiger range areas, images of tigers were taken by a camera trap in the Shendurney Wildlife Sanctuary of the district. Earlier only circumstantial evidence such as tiger kills and pug marks were cited to show the presence of the big cat in the district. Mr. Gopinathan said that the tiger population of the State was estimated in vicinity of 70 to 100.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/high-alert-at-tigerbearing-forests-in-state/article4493981.ece

Cause of elephant’s injury being investigated

Forest officials, who are assigned the task of monitoring the condition of an injured 40-year-old tusker in the Sugur Reserve Forest near Masinagudy, are in the process of determining what caused the injury.

District Forest Officer, The Nilgiris North, Ashish Kumar Srivasrava on Saturday said that the nature of the injury on the tip of the trunk indicated that it was not natural. It may have been caused by a sharp object or a barbed wire fence.

Wildlife offence

However, “we are not ruling out anything”, he said and added that a piece of the trunk had fallen off.

If it had been caused by a snare it would be treated as a wildlife offence and appropriate action initiated.

Pointing out that the animal was now roaming along with two other elephants or alone, Mr. Srivastava said that it was very docile.

A swelling in a part of the trunk, which was noticed earlier, had come down.

To a question, he said that the injury was not life threatening.

Medicine

Though normally in such situations the law of the jungle would be allowed to take its course, in this case steps had been taken to provide oral medicine through bananas, jack fruits, and water melons.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/cause-of-elephants-injury-being-investigated/article4493819.ece

Scripting An Almanac, One Bird At A Time

A project to track bird movements across India may help pin down the reasons why the number of migratory birds is declining. Akshai Jain reports

Last flight? Migratory pelicans and
painted storks at a small pond near
Dholera, 110 km from Ahmedabad.
Photo: AFP

RAMIT SINGAL, a 22-year-old engineering student, was puzzled. The Common Sandpiper, a small dust-coloured bird that migrates every winter from Russia to India, had been late arriving. Instead of getting to Manipal, (where Singal studies), in early August, the birds had arrived in mid-September. “Other migrants, like the Lesser Sand Plover, were also late,” he says.

In Mysore, a few hundred kilometres away, A Shivaprakash was pondering over another ornithological question. Being a scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, puzzles don’t ruffle him, but the decline in the number of water birds in the lakes around Mysore was still troubling.

Till a decade ago, his birding group counted nearly 3 lakh migratory birds every season across 200 small and big lakes in Mysore, Chamarajanagar and Coorg districts. “But in the past seven or eight years,” he sighs, “there’s been a drastic reduction. I don’t think we have counted more than 50,000 birds.”

Birdwatchers in other parts of the country have also been alarmed by the decline in the numbers of migratory birds and the increasingly late arrivals of species that do come.

Unfortunately, in the absence of any long-term monitoring data on Indian bird species, it’s impossible to evaluate these changes scientifically, with a certainty that goes beyond anecdotal evidence and conjecture. Without the reference point that this data constitutes — referred to as a baseline in scientific parlance — it is impossible to say whether the shifts reported by birdwatchers are routine fluctuations or indicators of a far graver problem. Ornithologists find themselves in the position of a football referee tasked with calling a goal in a field that has no posts.

“At present, we suspect even so-called common species such as Common Drongo, Indian Roller, Hoopoe, Magpie Robin and Common Nightjar have declined due to habitat destruction and extensive use of pesticides,” says Dr Asad Rahmani, director of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). “But we don’t have good scientific data to back this impression.”

Now, MigrantWatch, a ‘citizen science’ programme that relies on the observations of hundreds of amateur birdwatchers like Singal and Shivaprakash, is changing that.

The programme, started by Suhel Quader, an ecologist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru, has built up a meticulous database of common winter migrants.

Birdwatchers from across the country upload detailed observations from their birding trips on the programme’s website. Quader and his team then collate it, charting the arrival and departure of migrant species, and tracking their movement through the country.

Anniversaries might be irrelevant in the natural world, but for MigrantWatch, the five years it has just completed is a milestone that marks significant progress towards establishing a baseline.

From monitoring just nine migratory species when it started, it now monitors 246 species, focussing on 30 common and easily identified migrants. Over 600 birders have contributed to this database, which just hit 19,000 observations.

After a slow start, interest in the programme has shot up. “More people have joined us in the past year-and-a-half,” says Quader proudly, “than in the first four years put together.”

More significantly, the observational dots are joining up and the faint outline of patterns emerging. For 20 species, MigrantWatch has accumulated 200 or more observations, and for another six, it has more than 500 observations each.

Source: http://tehelka.com/scripting-an-almanac-one-bird-at-a-time/

A close encounter with wild elephants near Coonoor

D. RADHAKRISHNAN
Two wild elephants roaming close to the Coonoor-Marappalam stretch of the Metupalayam-Ooty National Highway for the past fortnight created a flutter at the Runneymede Station of the Nilgiri Mountain Railway (NMR) on Thursday.

Railway sources told The Hindu that when the Mettupalayam-Ooty steam engine-hauled mountain train, with about 200 passengers including foreign tourists and students, stopped at Runneymede for filling water, the animals were spotted nearby. Unable to resist the photo opportunity and eager to get a closer look, many of them got out of the train. However, this angered the elephants which had started chasing the tourists.

Taken aback by the turn of events, the passengers and the railway staff ran helter-skelter. With the passengers bundling into the coaches the train hurriedly left the station. While they expressed the hope that the animals would be driven back to the forests before anything unfortunate happened, forest officials sought the cooperation of the people in dealing with the situation.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/a-close-encounter-with-wild-elephants-near-coonoor/article4486983.ece

Panel to submit report on private forests by April

P. OPPILI
A high-level committee, comprising officials of the Forest, Agriculture and Revenue Departments, constituted to examine the issues under the provisions of Tamil Nadu Preservation of Private Forests (TNPPF) Act 1949, will submit its report to the government by April.

Forest Department sources said the committee headed by an officer in the rank of Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Forest Conservation Act) visited 11 districts in the State and recorded the grievances of private patta holders.

The farmers wanted amendments to the existing Act whereby they could look at changing the crop for cultivation, get permission for felling trees in their property, and get permission for sale or lease of their land and growing of crops and trees in their land.

A senior Forest Department official said it was for the first time a high-level committee was formed. The State Forest Minister, while moving the demand for grant for the Forest department for 2012-13, made the announcement that the government will constitute a committee to look into the issues under the TNPPF Act of 1949. The government order issued on September 3, 2012 said the committee must submit its report within four months from the date of issue of this order.

Conservationists and nature lovers have, however, requested the Forest Department to uphold the TNPPF Act 1949. Tamil Nadu Green Movement, in a letter to the Chairman of the Committee, said the Act was enacted to prevent indiscriminate destruction of private forests with the customary and prescriptive rights therein and for certain other purposes.

The Act is important especially in the Nilgiris district, which is rich in floral and faunal diversity, which are highly endemic. Protected areas such as Mudumalai Tiger Reserve and Mukuruthy National Park and crucially important reserve forests of Nilgiri North are flanked by private forests, which offered landscape connectivity to the animals. Environmentalists in the district have constantly relied upon this Act from time to time to prevent illegal activities such as tree felling and construction of buildings.

Reviewing the functionality of the Act with a view to reducing its vigour or to repeal the same at the instance of a few persons, who claimed that they were affected due to implementation of this Act, is purely based on personal and vested interests, the letter said. The Act has been useful in preserving and protecting the forests and tree cover in various parts of the State, the letter noted.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/panel-to-submit-report-on-private-forests-by-april/article4486843.ece

Leopard preying on cattle caught by forest officials

Hunter becomes hunted:The leopard caught by
forest officials in Kothagattu village on the outskirts of
Hanamkonda on Wednesday.– Photo: M. Murali

A leopard which had been stalking and preying on cattle in the interior parts of Atmakur mandal was caught alive by the Forest Department officials, here on Wednesday.

Following complaints by villagers that their sheep were being killed by wild animals, forest officials lay a trap by placing a sheep in a cage. In the wee hours of Wednesday near Kothagattu village on the outskirts of Hanamkonda, the animal was caught. Soon after it realised it was trapped, the leopard tried to escape by biting on the bone and lost two of its teeth. It also tried to dig up and damaged the wooden floor of the cage and suffered injuries on its limbs.

Forest officials, led by Divisional Forest Officer (wildlife) Ch. Ganga Reddy, rangers Raja Rao and Venugopala Chary, accompanied by veterinary doctor Praveen visited the spot.

Mr. Ganga Reddy said that the shocked leopard in a bid to escape had sustained injuries to its teeth and gums which were bleeding.

Shifted to Hyderabad

Though local forest officials, in consultation with Hyderabad-based Principal Conservator of Forests (wildlife) A.V. Joseph, had initially decided to leave the trapped animal inside the thick forests of Tadwai mandal in Warangal district, they later decided to shift it to Nehru Zoological Park in Hyderabad on seeing the injury to the leopard’s teeth. The general health of the leopard is said to be normal.

The local zoo, Vana Vignana Kendram, lacked the facilities to accommodate the leopard or any other wild animals.

The villagers said that sometime ago a shepherd from the village had spotted the leopard from a distance and had run back to inform other villagers. But by the time they tried to spot the animal, it had made a good escape.

The leopard had been preying on the sheep, buffaloes and other animals and was successfully escaping the villagers by hiding behind the hillocks abutting the habitation.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-andhrapradesh/leopard-preying-on-cattle-caught-by-forest-officials/article4483299.ece

Straying tiger trapped in Wayanad

A tiger which spread panic among the villagers of Moodakkolly, a village adjacent to the Chethalayat range of forest under the South Wayanad forest division, after it attacked two persons, was tranquilized at a coffee plantation on Wednesday.

Those attacked were identified as Binu of Pulimootil, 35, and Vasudevan, 36, of Karthamkalayil at Moodakkolly. They were admitted to the Medical College Hospital, Kozhikode, with serious injuries.

‘‘While they tried to locate the animal, without heeding to the warning by forest officials and a mob gathered there, it attacked them,’’ the villagers said.

The tiger, nearly 10-year-old, was spotted by a farmer in his plantain farm near Moodakkolly in the morning. The animal was resting inside the plantation after killing a wild boar and a dog near a paddy field adjacent to the farm. When the farmer sighted the animal, it escaped to a coffee plantation near the farm.

A team of forest officials led by South Wayanad forest division officer P. Dhaneshkumar rushed to the spot .

Meanwhile, a team of veterinary surgeons led by Arun Zachariah reached there around 4 p.m. to tranquilize the animal. The animal was tranquilized around 5.30 p.m.

When the forest officials started to shift the animal to the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary office at Sulthan Bathery in a vehicle, a mob tried to prevent it and detained the forest officials demanding to disclose the location of release.

Later, the police team dispersed the mob by using force. ‘‘The animal will not be released in the forest area of Wayanad district instead we are planning to release it in Parmabikulam or Periyar Tiger Reserve after examining the health condition of the animal,’’ Mr. Gopinath told The Hindu .

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/straying-tiger-trapped-in-wayanad/article4483600.ece

Kovai Coutrallam to remain closed from today

The Forest Department has announced that Kovai Coutrallam waterfalls will remain out of bounds for tourists for a week or 10 days from March 6, in view of the road-laying works.

According to the forest department sources, the Engineering Wing of the Forest Department is laying road from the tribal hamlet after the check post till the parking lot, a little ahead of the waterfalls. In order to facilitate easy and smooth completion of the works, tourists will not be permitted for a week or 10 days.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/kovai-coutrallam-to-remain-closed-from-today/article4480562.ece

Octopuses come calling in Kochi’s saline backwaters

K. S. SUDHI

An octopus that was netted in Kochi recently.

Octopuses were recently spotted in the serene backwaters of Kochi. The octopuses may not drag you down to the ocean depths with their long tentacles and fearsome suckers as depicted in some horror movies. But they have sent marine experts racking their brains with their unusual appearances in Kochi waters.

Scientists strongly believe that the increased salinity of the Kochi coastal waters would have invited them from the Arabian Sea. They also cautioned about the possible presence of more such organisms in the district’s waterbodies, thanks to the increased salinity in the backwaters.

Octopuses have made sudden appearances in the water bodies of Champakkara, Panangad and Kumbalanghi in the district. Fishermen have netted a few octopuses from the coastal waters. Some anglers too succeeded in getting the unusual catch. However, they continue to elude scientists who are eager to learn about them. K. Sunilkumar Muhammad, Head of the Molluscan Fisheries Division of the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi, said octopuses had not been reported from Kochi in the recent past. He identified one netted animal as Amphioctopus neglectus.

“The presence of the marine species in coastal waters is due to the increased salinity of the area, which would be similar to the marine environment. The level of salinity would have reached 35 ppt (parts per thousand) by now, equivalent to seawater. Sardines, another marine fish, were earlier reported from Champakkara,” said Dr. Sunilkumar.

B. Madhusoodana Kurup, the Vice-Chancellor of the Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies, Panangad, said the salinity of the Kochi backwaters could be on par with Arabian Sea these days. Strong tidal action, absence of rain and freshwater influx results in increased salinity and the environment would be transformed into one similar to the sea. Salinity is one of the crucial factors that trigger migration in aquatic animals. However the migration of octopuses was something unheard of in Kerala, Dr. Kurup said.

Mr. Sunilkumar also felt that a possible increase in the population of octopuses in sea and increased competition for food too might have forced the expedition. Such a possibility can be confirmed by conducting stomach content analysis, he said.

According to Dr. Kurup, the backwaters are excellent feeding grounds for marine organisms when compared to the sea.

Usually, the salinity variation in water between high and low tides deter marine organisms from coming to backwaters for feeding. The changed situation would invite more marine organisms hitherto unreported from here during the rest of summer months, he said.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Kochi/octopuses-come-calling-in-kochis-saline-backwaters/article4482516.ece