the vanishing tigers of panna-where have the tigers gone

8/8/2019 The Vanishing Tigers of Panna-Where Have the Tigers Gone

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PANNA : Where have the Tigers Gone?(With Post Script, 2015) Suhas

Kumar(originallywritten in 2009)

In 2009, two young wild tigressesone from Kanha and another from Bandhavgarh tiger

reserves where translocated to Panna tiger to supplement the struggling tiger population,

which, reportedly, was very-very low or non-existent. And after a gap of several monthsa middle-aged male tiger was brought from Pench Tiger reserve to give company to the

reintroduced females.

To find out the reasons for the sudden disappearance of tigers from Panna, the

government of India ordered an investigation by a special team (SIT) headed by a former

director of project tiger and the state government set up a high level committee to

investigate the causes. While the SIT squarely blamed the state government formismanagement and its failure to curb poaching, the committee proposed some

ecological perspective saying that the females left the park to safeguard their cubs from

male tigers. In my opinion both these findings are not wholly correct.

That the habitat of Panna, till 2007, did support a number of tigers is undisputable for I

have firsthand knowledge of this fact - during an one day tour within the reserve in July

2007, I had seen fresh pug marks at 3 different locations 10-15 kms. apart and heardvocalization by a tiger near Madla entry point of the tiger reserve.

The confirmation that the Panna reserve had lost all of its female tigers and from amongthe males merely a lone survivor roamed came after several rounds of checking and

rechecking by the experts. This lone survivor was then wandering outside the safe

confines of the tiger reserve; the staff had seen its pugmarks near Panna town in the fields

along the PannaSatna road.

When I learnt all these details in March, 2009 through newspapers, I was totally at loss as

it was difficult for me to understand how in a short span of a year and a half all the tigersof Panna had suddenly vanished. I was also confused because in the preceding three

years, Panna Tiger reserve had undergone a massive protection facelift? If poaching was

the explanation I was unable to perceive how, in a short span of time, such large scaleextirpation of tiger could go unreported without a whimper in the press for Panna was a

hot destination for media after a researcher had made a series of allegation against the

management.

I devoted some time to search for plausible causes for this sad state of affairs at Panna

and came out with some hypotheses that may be tested in coming days. In my view, thereason for disappearance of a species is manifoldand in most cases it is a combination

of unsuitable ecological conditions and anthropogenic decimating factors like poaching.When an endangered species suddenly vanishes the so called experts tend to blame it on

poaching alone. And no body cares to find out the other reasons.

Poaching, in and around Panna Tiger reserve is a reality, no doubt, but almost all other

tiger bearing areas face the same threat. Today amply networked and equipped

professional gangs of poachers are involved and in this trade and the local traditional


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hunter communities are their partners. But what are the other factors besides poaching to

explain the mysterious disappearance of all tigers from Panna over a short duration(between July 2007 to March 2009).

The plausible hypotheses to explain the mysterious disappearance of tigers, which I am

inclined to offer, is based on my knowledge of the terrain and the tigers of Panna, are:

i. The habitat had only a few female; some were poached within their territories

that extended beyond the reserve and the remaining few, except one, dispersedout of the reserve in search of better hunting grounds. Presence of this lone

female with two cubs was noticed in adjoining north Panna forest division in

2009.ii. Males spread out and moved to other areas beyond the tiger reserve in search

of prey and fecund females.

The above two hypotheses draw support from Dr. Raghu Chundawats Tiger EcologyResearch, which concludes that the male tigers of Panna operate in a much wider area

one of the radio-collared male had a territory as huge as 277 square kms and females of

Panna Tiger reserve have territories larger than those reported for females from any other

PAs (Sunquist, 1981; Smith, 1984; Karanth and Sunquist, 2000). The territory the femaletigers either extended beyond the Park boundary or touched its periphery, exposing

breeding females to external threats (Chundawat,R. 2001).

This also means that the male tigers that are no longer seen within the reserve left the

park after disappearance of the females and moved out into the territorial forests of Satna,

Rewa, Chhatarpur, Chanderi, Sagar, Damoh or Tikamgarh or may be in the forests ofUttar Pradesh a quick look at the google map of this landscapes reveals the extent of

good and sparse forest cover beyond the tiger reserve which the tigers of Panna might use

as their extended territories. The support to this hypothesis comes from the field reports

of sudden appearance of a tiger in Damoh forest division about180 kms away

recently.

That the tiger from Panna could wander off to far away forests of Damoh was confirmedagain when a male radio-collared tiger, that had strayed out of the reserve, was recaptured

from there. I am also inclined to believe that a tiger and a tigress that have made Madhav

national park their home since 2007 are also refugees from Panna tiger reserve. Habitat of

Madhav national park had recovered from severe depletion resulting from almost 7 yearsof mismanagement until a sensible and hard-working officer arrived on the scene in2006.

Till then it had been more than 25 years for Madhav once a playground for tigersto

have cradled a resident tiger, though pugmarks of transients were seen off and on. The

fresh and continued occupation of Madhav's rejuvenated habitat by two tigers is a case of

occupation of a resurrected, potential habitat by dispersing tigers.

Coming back to Panna, Dr. Chundawats research also points out two major problemspertaining to natural prey of tiger-

i. A density of 32 prey /km2 is estimated for Panna National Park, which is low incomparison to other high tiger density areas.

ii. A low ratio of fawn and yearlings per female is observed in the chital population,

indicating poor productivity of the population.


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The research attributes poor utilization of habitat by herbivores to the sparsely woodedhabitats and the absence of water in tiger reserves upper plateau in summer season.

Considering these two constraints that the tigers of Panna were facing, relocation of 9

villages that had a sizable cattle population - an important prey supplement for tigers

had an effect on prey availability. As most families of these 9 villages moved out alongwith their cattle in 2008-09 leaving the habitat suddenly bereft of supplementary prey

(cattle). Another management intervention that might have adversely affected prey

availability for the tigers was the translocation of about 5000 feral cattle from the reserveto cattle pens by the end of 2008. Chital, which usually forms a major portion of tigers

natural prey, are not very productive in the dry-deciduous and water scarce landscape of

Panna, making tiger utterly dependent on supplementary prey like cattle. The restricteddistribution of chital in the undisturbed areas in and around Badgadi, a village that was

relocated about 20 years back, may have been another reason why tigers were forced to

move out of the reserve in search of prey. If the stronghold of chital "Badgadi" and its

immediate surrounds are occupied by a formidable male, other males would find littlecourage to prey on chital there.

Some well meaning people who point out that the Panna tiger reserve has a good

population of blue bull and therefore there is no dearth of prey for tiger should considerthat blue bull is not a preferred prey of tiger and compared to cattle it makes a very

difficult quarry as it is much more agile and alert than the cattle, besides it inhabits drier

and sparsely vegetated tracts which the tiger usually avoids for such tracts are waterdeficient and provide little ambush cover. Because tiger has evolved as a specialized

forest-edge predator following the cervidradiation in Asia (Sunquist and Karanth, 1999),

its survival and hunting strategies are more cued to cervids than prey found in openhabitat. Tiger is not avoiding blue bull consciously but only a part of the population of

nilgai is predated - that which occupies forest-edge habitat. Moreover, blue bull is less

likely to achieve their optimal densities in these forest habitats. Therefore, in Panna, prey

species like nilgai and chinkara may be playing a limited role in the ecology of tigers.

The Cervid and the bovid populations usually achieve their maximum densities in amosaic of forest habitat and in Asia and it is from these habitats that higher tiger densities

are reported.

The research carried out by Chundawat in Panna reveals that the tigers habitat occupancy

is directly linked with water and prey availability and also that the productivity of natural

prey like chital and sambar has been poor in Panna compared to other reserves, even thefawn to yearling survival rate has been be very low in Panna. Gogate and Chundawat

(1997) report that chital is the most preferred prey in Panna (in terms of number) and

this species is being utilised far in excess of its availability . It is only in the case of Panna

that chital has been reported as the preferred prey whereas in all other cases so far chital

has been reported to be the principal prey. This is probably explained by the absence ofhabitats that are conducive to proliferation of chital. Hence in Panna there is a need to

create and maintain such habitats (Mathai Manu Verghese, June 1999, Wildlife Instituteof India, Dehradun). Maintaining the relocated village sites at a seral stage as edge

habitats consisting of grassland juxtaposed by woodlands and create more waterholes

should become the prime focus of management.

If data of cattle kill for three consecutive years (2004, 2005 and 2006), for the villagesthat were evacuated in 2007, are analyzed, one may be able to draw some useful


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conclusions. I would also suggest that all the DFOs of the districts which I have listed in

this note may be asked to mount a vigil to locate evidences of tiger in their forests andimmediately report presence of any tiger within their respective jurisdictions. As I have

said earlier the tiger and its remaining non-PA habitats need protection more outside the

PAs than within, the DFOs need to be equipped and made responsible for the protection

of tigers outside PAs - at present they appear to be in a state of denial of the threat ofpoaching?

In my view, the management needs to begin a planned intervention to augment water

availability in water-scarce habitats and try to reclaim the abandoned village sites as

grasslands so that the chital , a versatile species, may respond favourably and becomemore productive. With better habitats the fawn to yearling survival rate, which is very

low right now, would certainly improve. The another important intervention needed will

be to equip and make the territorial forest officers ,who manage territories around the

tiger reserve, responsible for tigers and wildlife so as to protect breeding territories of thefemale tigers that extends beyond the boundary of the tiger reserve.

If we could take these measures without losing time we may hope the return of the

tigers to Panna , or else We may be witnessing the last of the tigers in this unfortunate

reserve.

I hope that the nomad tigers would come back as the habitat and prey base improve, but

I also fear that the hostile conditions beyond the safe confines of the tiger reserve mayhave already decimated the wandering tigers. The fate of the vagrant tigers outside tiger

reserve remains uncertain. Outside it is wild-wild west poachers lurk with their gin-

traps, sticks and iron bars and the upset villagers lie in wait with their devices toelectrocute or poison tigers. With this dismal scene outside the reserves there is but a

flimsy hope that out of 10 straying tigers probably only one would get a safe passage

back home.( P.S. - In 2013, CCMB, Hyderabad published a research paper confirming

that one of the cubs born in Panna after reintroduction carries the genes of a tiger thought

to have been exterminated before 2009- an undeniable proof that one of the resident tigerthat had left PNP had returned to Panna and mated with one of the reintroduced tigresses)

Now in the prevailing situation what the female tigers brought from Kanha and

Bandhavgarh could do remains to be seen. The chances are - the lucky males that have so

far escaped the trap or the live wire will return by the onset of winter when the mating

season reaches its peak. It is time, therefore, to ensure - by putting in place pointedprotection machinery inside and outside the tiger reserve- that the nomads outside the

reserves remain safe and the females within the tiger reserve do not stray out. And by

employing a network of informers in the peripheral villages and by swift preemptive

actions poachers are kept at bay. Pressure on the poachers must never relax. ( P.S.- The

tiger from Pench and the females from Kanha , Bandhavgarh have successfullyresurrected the tiger population in Panna and in 2015 there were around 30 resident tigers

in Panna tiger reserve)

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Note : The views expressed above are solely of the author and not written in any officialcapacity( additions made in 2015).

( The original note written on 26.3.2009 was Sent To Dr. P.B Gango padhyaya, the then

CWLW, MP and Shri H.S. Panwar, Member of the Committee constituted by the StateGovernment to inquire into the issue of Vanishing tigers of Panna.)

the vanishing tigers of panna-where have the tigers gone

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