In an attempt to make Kaimur Wildlife Sanctuary (KWLS) tiger-friendly, the Bihar government has decided to conduct animal census there, a forest department official said. Tigers had been found in KWLS, the state’s largest sanctuary, some three decades ago but they are not there now. The big cats from adjoining forests in other states sometimes visit KWLS and the state government wants that they stay there permanently.
“The wildlife census is a must as it is the first step towards developing the Kaimur Wildlife Sanctuary into a tiger-bearing landscape. The exercise will start from January 15 and will be completed in 4-5 months,” Bihar Chief Wildlife Warden P K Gupta told PTI.
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The Wildlife Institute of India has already provided training to around 90 officials of the state environment department for conducting the census in the sanctuary. “They have been trained on species identification, use of field equipment such as compass, monitoring tigers and associated ecosystems etc. The census will determine the number of wild animals living in the sanctuary, which is crucial for converting it into a tiger-bearing landscape,” he said.
KWLS, with an area of 1,504.96 square kilometres, houses sizable populations of leopard, sloth bear, chital, sambar, wild pig, nilgai, 'chowsingha' (four-horned antelope) and about 70 species of resident birds. “It’s a perfect sanctuary to develop into a tiger-bearing landscape,” Gupta said. The census will also determine if the sanctuary has enough prey for tigers.
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“Tigers were present in KWLS till the mid-1990s as evident from forest department records. Due to lack of adequate protection and human-induced disturbances, the prime habitats of the sanctuary got fragmented resulting in local extinction of tigers and decimation of several other faunas,” the chief wildlife warden said.
With the restoration of law and order in the region, tigers started reappearing in Kaimur from 2016-17 onwards and, in the latest case in March 2020, a male tiger was spotted in camera traps, Gupta said. KWLS is connected with Chandraprabha Wildlife Sanctuary of UP, which again has links with Sanjay Dubri Tiger Reserve and Panna landscape in Madhya Pradesh through stepping stone forests of Marihan, Sukrit, Chunar ranges and wildlife sanctuaries of Ranipur (UP), Son Ghariyal and Bagdhara (MP), Gupta said. A stepping stone forest is a small, densely planted forest. Bihar's sole tiger reserve is in West Champaran district - Valmiki Tiger Reserve.
