Tiger may have hiked from Madhya Pradesh to Gujarat

The confirmation of a tiger’s presence in Gujarat’s Lunawada in Mahisagar district has come as a glimmer of hope for a possible comeback of the striped cat in a state where the last tiger was sighted over three decades ago in Dangs.

Now, it has come to light that in all likelihood, the tiger traversed nearly 350 km and reached Gujarat from a forest division in Dewas forest range, Madhya Pradesh.

Senior officials from MP forest department said that a tiger had settled in the Dewas forest range between March 2016 and June 2018 and was tracked up to the MP-Gujarat border.

Preliminary comparison of camera trap photos of the tiger, clicked in MP as well as in Gujarat recently, show matching stripe patterns, suggesting that it is the same tiger, Chief Conservator of Forest, Ujjain, said.

Wildlife biologists collaborating with the MP forest department to track the tiger also confirmed that the tiger spotted in Gujarat indeed had stripe patterns similar to the one that had settled in the Dewas range. Gujarat forest department officials could not be reached for comment.

“Based on preliminary photos, we can say that it is the same tiger. Our team had tracked the tiger up to the MP-Gujarat border near Petlawad in Jhabua. After June 2018, it disappeared. We did not even see pug marks or other signs. It survived in Dewas and surrounding areas on Nilgai in the scrub forests,” said BS Annagiri.

As per Annagiri and his team, the tiger may have reached Lunawada via Dahod after crossing into Gujarat. During the time it was in MP, it also moved towards Indore and Ujjain from Dewas and there were times when it was not seen for weeks.

The development comes even as MP has been awaiting translocation of lions from Gujarat to Kuno-Palpur sanctuary, as per Supreme Court orders. Tigers traversing long distances using corridors is not unusual and there have been cases where tigers have covered a 500 km expanse between Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, using forested corridors outside tiger reserves and national parks.

“This dispersal highlights the need for conserving corridors. If corridors exist, wild animals will naturally recolonise areas were they have gone extinct,” said Milind Pariwakam, wildlife biologist, Wildlife Conservation Trust and member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, connectivity and conservation specialist group.

The Kheoni wildlife sanctuary is the closest protected area to Dewas, situated around 130 km away, which in turn is also connected through corridors with the Ratapani wildlife sanctuary which lies to the east of Kheoni.