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.
Bureau Report