The in-house exercise, conducted from January 27 to 31, with the help of 400 staffers and around 25 volunteers in 230 beats of Melghat Tiger Reserve (MTR), comprising Akot, Sipna and Gugamal Wildlife Divisions was testing time for the field staff.
This was revision of a similar exercise carried out all over India by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, between January 27 and February 3 last year.
Tigers have always remained elusive in MTR, fondly called the 'Kipling Country' and known for its mystifying landscape with high hills and deep valleys. Tourists in the past one year (December 2010 to January 2011) have reported just three tiger and five leopard sightings. Yet, clinching evidence of carnivores like pugmarks, scrape and scent marks, scats etc. show tigers and leopards are very much around. They are rarely spotted due to complex landscape and dense forest cover. Also, large areas are not accessible to tourists. Read the full report here.
Source: Vijay Pinjarkar, TNN, Nagpur.
