Wayanad witnessing an explosion in tiger count
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Once seen only in zoos and circuses, tigers have now become a matter of life and death for farmers and residents of Wayanad. For every carnivore captured from human habitations, there are more prowling the yards of houses and farmlands. After forest officials tranquilised and captured a tiger that had killed a farmer in Mananthavady on Saturday, another emerged in the same region. The recent incidents have raised serious questions about the big cat population in the district.
Forest officials and wildlife experts had in fact warned the forest department about an imminent population explosion in the region’s forests, especially in the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary. But the state government had failed to take note of the cautions. On the other hand, higher-ups in the department and so-called puritan environmentalist groups put pressure on forest officials and experts against taking the issue public.
According to a chief conservator of forests, who had worked in the district, there are around 180 tigers in Wayanad’s forests, which are spread over 756 sqkm. Most of these big cats are based in the wildlife sanctuary, which has an area of 344 sqkm. Interestingly, the Parambikulam Tiger Reserve has only around 25 tigers in an area of 643.66 sqkm and the 2,395.73 sqkm area of the Periyar Tiger Reserve forest is inhabited by just around 29 tigers.
Forest officials point to the stringent conservation methods adopted by the state government under Project Tiger that played a key role in the population explosion. “While implementing a conservation programme like Project Tiger, the state should have considered the whole ecosystem where they intended to implement it,” a wildlife expert told TNIE.
“On the other hand, when the tiger population was threatened they just implemented a programme, focusing on increasing the population of that particular species. The tragedy that Wayand is witnessing today is the aftermath of that,” he said. Moreover, unlike the Periyar Tiger Reserve, which is an evergreen forest, the semideciduous forests of Wayanad are a perfect breeding ground for tigers.