5 days Ago By Akanksha Mishra
New Delhi: Johnny travelled 300 kilometres from Maharashtra to Telangana in search of a mate. Ever since the young male tiger’s arrival at Telangana’s Kawal Tiger Reserve Tuesday, forest officials have been celebrating. Now, they are banking on Johnny finding a mate and becoming the first resident tiger in the reserve in two years.
Around three female tigers from Maharashtra’s Tadoba National Park are also in the area, a forest official said. “We are really excited about Johnny’s coming and we hope he chooses to reside here. He will find the prey base and habitat to his liking,” Dr Elusing Meru, Chief Wildlife Warden (Forest Advisory Committee), Telangana told ThePrint.
Johnny, a six-year-old male, left Maharashtra’s Painganga Wildlife Sanctuary about a month ago. With the onset of winter, many male tigers leave their territories due to a lack of female companions, Dr Meru explained. In Johnny’s case, his hunt for a female mate led him through Maharashtra’s Nanded district to Yavatmal district’s Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary, until finally he crossed the border into Telangana at Adilabad district.
Since the Kawal Tiger Reserve is located at the northern edge of Telangana, it has access to both Tadoba Tiger Reserve and Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in Maharashtra. But its name is a misnomer of sorts—despite its thick forests, grasslands and over 2,000 square kilometres of area, the reserve has not had resident tigers in its core region for two years now. Earlier this year, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) too had pulled up the Telangana Forest Department because there were ‘0 tigers left in the reserve’ due to shrinking habitat.
Currently, there are a few tigers in the Kawal Reserve including the corridor and buffer areas, but they are not resident big cats. They keep moving in and out frequently, Dr Meru said. Now, with the arrival of Johnny and a few other tigresses that entered from Tadoba a few months ago, forest officials are hopeful of seeing a new generation of tigers in their reserve again.
“This is the ideal place for breeding tigers because we have water availability as the Godavari is right there—but due to challenges in the buffer and corridors, many tigers don’t even enter the core,” S. Shantaram, the field director of Kawal Tiger Reserve, told ThePrint. Also Read: US biologists win Nobel in Medicine for microRNA discovery.
Here’s how it prevents diseases like cancer Notified in 2013, the Kawal Tiger Reserve is one of two tiger reserves in Telangana. Given its location, the National Tiger Conservation Authority calls it a major “sink location” for incoming tigers from Tadoba and other Maharashtra reserves that have overcapacity. Just this year, the Kawal Tiger Reserve has catered to tigers hunting for new territories.
One of them may be a potential mate for Johnny. “We have a group of around three tigresses from Tadoba, spotted in the Asifabad corridor region this week,” Shantaram said. “They recently made a kill too and, as late as yesterday, we tracked them in the Kawal Tiger Reserve corridor region.
” However, these tigresses and Johnny too don’t count as ‘resident tigers’ of the reserve. According to Shantaram, a resident tiger is one that has either taken birth and grown up at the reserve or as an adult has marked its territory in the region. Even Johnny, who has been spotted in the reserve for the last two days, will have to make regular kills for a few months and acclimatise to the place to be known as Kawal’s resident tiger.
This is where the reserve faces challenges. Even in 2014—two years after the Kawal Wildlife Sanctuary was declared a tiger reserve by the Government of India—the Status of Tigers, Co-predators & Prey in India report found no sighting of tigers in the reserve through camera traps. The 2018 report found 1 tiger, and in 2022, the number was again back to 0.
“We have had a lot of false alarms—tigers come, there is enough prey base and habitat availability for them. But then they don’t stay, they are just passing through,” Dr Meru said. According to Shantaram and Meru, the problem lies in the buffer and corridor regions—roads, construction, human habitats and breaks in corridors cause disturbance for tigers, noted both the NGT panel and the Kawal forest officials.
When the buffer and corridor regions themselves are so disturbed, asks Shantaram, how will a tiger even reach the core? “We have almost 2,000 acres of pristine, undisturbed area of core habitat for tigers, but most tigers that enter our reserve don’t even reach it. Johnny did, thankfully,” said Shantaram. “There’s water, there’s female tigers coming in from Tadoba.
I hope Johnny is able to find a mate here, but we can never predict these things.” In anticipation, however, the reserve has over 300 cameras working full-time as well as 120 animal trackers that provide daily reports on the status of tigers coming in and going out of the reserve. (Edited by Radifah Kabir) Also Read: 2024 Physics Nobel for AI scientists.
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