Roads, infrastructure prevent tigers from settling in Indian tiger reserve

Filed 1h ago · Via Mongabay · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Kawal Tiger Reserve in Telangana, India has abundant deer, antelope and wild pig populations, yet no resident tiger population, according to researchers cited by Mongabay India. Since 2015, only 15 tigers have entered from neighboring Maharashtra, and just two of those were female.

Researcher Imran Siddiqui attributes the failure to a corridor fragmented by coal mines, an irrigation project, electrified farm fences, a railway line and National Highway 44, which he calls the most formidable barrier. Male tigers occasionally cross, he says, but risk-averse females turn back, and without females no breeding population can form.

The reserve's core also still contains 37 villages and 67 small settlements as of 2023, according to conservationist Anish Andheria. Local Adivasi leader Siddam Bhujang Rao says promises made when the reserve was declared in 2012, including land, water and model villages for relocated families, were never honored.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

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You can draw a line on a map and call it a wildlife corridor, but the tigers apparently read the terrain, not the paperwork. The people who got moved out to make room got broken promises instead of the model villages they were sold, which is its own kind of habitat loss. Airlifting in tigers to fix a road problem is like buying a bigger doghouse when the real issue is the fence.

Source: Read the original at Mongabay → Scored: Night Vigil · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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