Hyderabad: Carnivore sign survey as part of the All India Tiger Estimates 2021-22 has begun in Amrabad Tiger Reserve (ATR), which is home to the highest population of the big cat in Telangana. As per the 2019 phase IV census, currently, there are 14 tigers in ATR. Forest department officials are confident that this time the tiger numbers will increase in the reserve.
Already, two staff members, participating in the survey, have sighted tigers. This apart, staff members have also sighted sloth bears and a leopard with cubs, which is a good sign, said a senior official from ATR. Apart from tigers, ATR has considerable prey population density, including spotted deer, sambar, nilgai, wild boars, four horned antelope and Chinkara.
The survey commenced on October 27 and would be conducted for about 120 days. To conduct the survey effectively, the entire ATR is divided into four blocks, including Amrabad I and II, Achampet and Nagarjunasagar divisions.
Each block will be covering an area of about 600 square kms and nearly 600 camera traps are installed at 300 strategic locations, where possibility of sighting the wild animals is high. Staff members will be conducting the survey in each block for about 25 days. During the survey, they will be looking for pug marks, besides scats and scratch marks of wild animals.
For every 12 days, the memory card in the cameras is replaced with a new one to ensure safety of the data. Conducting survey is a very challenging task for staff members as they have to trek long distances and cross rivulets and valleys. It took about nine hours for the staff members to cross the Kakiveti Vagu with all their equipment and install the cameras. They had to return to the base, the next day, the official explained.
In each block there are many locations, which are inaccessible but the prospects of sighting wild animals at such places is also more, he added. Once in every four years, as part of the survey, the entire Tiger Reserve’s core and buffer areas are covered with cameras to capture total population so that more individual tigers could be recorded.
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