COIMBATORE: A fully-grown ‘saddleback’ Nilgiri Tahr, the first animal of its kind to be radio-collared by the state forest department with the support of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)-India in March this year, was preyed upon by a carnivore at Mukurthi National Park in the Nilgiris on Wednesday. Nilgiri Tahr is the state animal of Tamil Nadu
The remains of the Tahr’s carcass were found at the western catchment area of the Western Ghats in the Mukuruthi Forest Range on Thursday morning during surveillance by a forest team that went to check on the animal after its movement got stopped at the spot on Wednesday evening.
A team led by deputy director of Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) for core area C Vidhya, range officer M Yuvarajkumar and forest veterinarian Dr Rajesh Kumar reached the spot on Friday and conducted a postmortem. Officials said the remains of the carcass were left at the place after the postmortem.
Speaking to TNIE, Yuvarajkumar said the postmortem examination revealed that the male Tahr might have been ambushed by a tiger.
“In order to study the behavior and movement of the Nilgiri Tahr, which is a schedule-I animal, the department fitted the radio collar around its neck. The animal’s movement was continuously tracked by a forest and WWF team for better understanding of its behavior under the Tamil Nadu government’s Nilgiri Tahr project.”
The predation of the Tahr by a tiger revealed the presence of a healthy eco system in the forest area, he said.
“From Wednesday morning, the Tahr’s movement was quite low. Since we got suspicious, we started tracking its movement continuously. After the ambush, the carnivore takes a few hours to eat the prey. If it was a leopard, it would have hidden the carcass on a tree to eat it after sometime. The Tahr’s last spot was zeroed in on Wednesday evening. Despite the harsh climatic conditions due to heavy rain, we reached the place and found the carcass,” he said.
One of the findings of the study was that Tahrs like to eat four varieties of grasses, sources said.
Officials said the fixing of the radio-collar on the Tahr was completed without tranquilising the mature male which has high stress-tolerance level. The animal was captured by using salt licks and drop net. The entire operation lasted for 20 minutes. The collar’s weight was 750 grams and it was less than 1% of the weight of the animal.