New Delhi: A wildlife intelligence report
has blamed tiger deaths in Panna Tiger Reserve on their "radio
collaring", raising questions over the projects to conserve
the animal throughout the country.
The report, submitted to Union Environment and Forests
Minister Jairam Ramesh, has said that the radio collaring of
Tigers in Madhya Pradesh`s Panna Tiger Reserve has
"compromised the overall security of the reserve".
"The report has found that around 80 percent of the
Tigers killed in Panna have met their deadly fate at the hands
of poachers after they were radio collared," top sources in
the Ministry said.
Terming its findings as "interesting", the report said
the "radio collar technique has been identified in most number
of cases" of tiger deaths that the team probed.
The report, submitted to the ministry with annexures
running into few pages dealt with the "security" reasons of
sudden disappearance of Tigers from the Panna reserve.
The document which talks on the "technical and security
issues" of the Panna reserve has said the radio collar has
restricted the movement of the animal for hunting its prey and
its free movement in the wild.
"The radio-collar has also resulted in infections on the
neck of the tiger which becomes fatal for the animal," the
sources said.
The report has put a question mark on the procedure of
radio collar techniques in the reserve.
"The investigating team found out that no Standard
Operating Procedures (SOP`s) for radio-collaring were taken
into consideration and hence, the tiger struggled his way to
death", sources said.
There are possibilities to suggest that poachers may have
also brought radio frequency catching devices to first locate
the tiger and subsequently poach it, they added.
The radio-collar technique has been used across the
country to understand animal behaviour and keep a check on the
population and receive incidents of poaching for rare and
highly conserved animals such as the tiger.
The radio-collaring of tigers in Panna was started in
1998 and the wild cats are first shot with tranquilisers to
tag the collars.
There were about 27 Tigers in the reserve till 2007 but
a recent survey by Wildlife Institute of India in May this
year had revealed that the reserve had no tiger left.
Bureau Report
