International Tiger Day: Jharkhand officers reach Maharashtra to attend meet at Tadoba Andhari National Park

Daltonganj: Jharkhand’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forest and Chief Wildlife Warden (CWLW) Ashish Rawat and Chief Conservator of Forest and Field Director (FD) at Palamu Tiger Reserve Kumar Ashutosh are in  Maharashtra-based Tadoba Andhari National Park Chandrapur on the occasion of International Tiger Day which is celebrated every year on July 29.

The two officers will be participating in a meeting at Chandrapur today which will be chaired by Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupinder Yadav.

The meeting will also be attended by senior officials of the National Tiger Conservation Authority as well as the field directors of the 52 tiger reserves in India.

Lagatar24.com correspondent spoke to the chief conservator of forest and field director of PTR Kumar Ashutosh who said, “We have two meetings today at Chandrapur in Maharashtra. One where Union Minister Bhupinder Yadav will grace the meeting, the other meeting is of the national board of wildlife.”

Incidentally on International Tiger Day, Kumar Ashutosh is in Maharashtra while his two deputies here in Jharkhand’s PTR one of South division Mukesh Kumar and the other of North division Kumar Ashish are also not in the PTR today following their presence in the Jharkhand High Court in Ranchi today in connection with a PIL filed long ago.

However, in consultation with the field director Kumar Ashutosh, the deputy director South division of PTR Mukesh Kumar has asked his team of officials from both the divisions South and North to assemble at Maromar to hold a symposium to mark the International Tiger Day.

Field director PTR Kumar Ashutosh said, “We have sent our proposal for the tiger safari here in the PTR to our principal chief conservator of forest and chief wildlife warden.”

“Our proposal for safari will include tiger, leopard, bison and deer. Our principal chief conservator of forest and chief wildlife warden Ashish Rawat has been kind enough to forward our proposal for a safari in the PTR to the Jharkhand government now,” he added.

Ashutosh said so far there has come 38 camera trapping of the leopards in the PTR.

On being asked that despite the confirmation of the presence of two tigers in PTR on the basis of the genetic analysis of scat conducted by the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, the two tigers have till date not been directly sighted by any PTR personnel nor trapped in cameras, Kumar Ashutosh said, “We know these two are here and doing fine.”

“We have also sent a proposal for setting up of 4 soft release centres in the whole of the PTR comprising both its divisions North and South to rear and grow cheetal, deer etc as an attempt to augment the prey base. We now find deer in 30 plus number at our grassland Lokaiyya where we first burnt down our year old grasses only to have new palatable grasses coming over there,” the field director said.

The two deputy directors Kumar Ashish and Mukesh Kumar also said that the wildlife requires four things which are good habitat to live in, adequate prey base and feed, drinking water and safety and security.

“We have been asking and motivating our personnel to ensure that none of these four things falls any short for the wildlife,” they said.