Tiger census begins at Bandipur

Shilpa P.

Mysuru: The Fifth All India Tiger (AIT) census began in Bandipur tiger reserve and national park in Chamarajnagar district on Saturday. It will be held at Nagarahole national park in Mysuru and Kodagu districts from Sunday to February 1 and at Biligiri Ranga tiger reserve in Chamarajngar district from January 27 to 6 February.

Speaking to News Trail, Bandipur incharge DCF Mr Karikalan said that, as many as 300 staff are carrying out the census in thirteen ranges and 112 beats of Bandipur in three blocks from Saturday. They will cover 37 beats in each block from 22 January to 27 January and 28 January to 2 February. And 39 beats will be covered between 3 January and 8 February, he said. Mr Karikalan explained, “as per the AIT census ‘8 day protocol’, the first day is devoted to training on Friday. On the next three days, from Saturday to Monday, our staff will do the sign survey and take account of pug marks, pellets, direct, indirect sighting and others of animals. In this they will mainly count carnivores including tiger, leopard, Bear and others, and mega herbivores including Gaur and elephants. And in another three days, the transact survey is done where in they count trees, herbs, shrubs and also observe small animals like rabbits and porcupines. On the eighth day they will compile the data,” he said.

They are doing the census using M STIPES (Monitoring System for Tigers - Intensive Protection and Ecological Status) software. While they had involved volunteers for the AIT census earlier, this year due to covid, they are doing it with forest staff only. Karnataka has the second highest number of 524 tigers after Madhya Pradesh which has 526 tigers as per the last AIT census held in 2018. Bandipur had 173 tigers, Nagarahole had 125 and BRT had 52 to 86 as per AIT census held in 2018.