India to showcase tiger conservation success to SAARC nations

India to showcase tiger conservation success to SAARC nations

Sunday, October 18, 2009, 19:44 IST

New Delhi: India will showcase its success story in re-introducing big cats in Rajasthan’s Sariska tiger reserve to the SAARC nations when their environment ministers meet here on Tuesday.

“The dignitaries from the neighbouring countries visiting India to attend a meeting on climate change will also take a trip to Sariska where three tigers – a male and two females were relocated from adjacent Ranthambore Tiger Reserve last year,” a senior official of the environment ministry said.

The tigers have settled well, making kills and Rajasthan forest department officials hope that they will soon go the family way.

“The guests will be shown a film on tiger re-location and taken to the reserve for sight seeing of the predators,” the official added.

The project, a first-of-its-kind experiment to relocate the big cats, is being touted as the country’s commitment towards wildlife conservation including preservation of tigers, which is enlisted as endangered species and tops the chart of the ecology system.

SAARC countries like Bhutan and Bangladesh have tigers in the wild but the count is too low when compared to India, which has around 1,400 big wild cats according to the estimate of Wildlife Institute of India as against 10,000 a decade ago.

Re-introduction of tigers in Sariska was aimed at reviving the big cat population in the region which lost all of them by 2005 to poachers and man-animal conflict.

Two more tigers are planned to be relocated in the coming months to the Sariska reserve, spread over 800 sq km.

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