The tigers were recorded with the help of camera traps. (File photo)
It appears there are more tigers than it was estimated earlier in some of Karnataka's wildlife sanctuaries. Wildlife conservationists hope this means the sanctuaries will be upgraded to tiger reserves to give the big cat even better protection.
The state forest department and the National Tiger Conservation Association also favour more tiger reserves for the state which has the most number of tigers in India. From the earlier estimate of 406 tigers, the tiger population in Karnataka has now gone slightly up.
When wildlife researchers in Karnataka were studying one kind of big cat in two south Karnataka wildlife sanctuaries, they came across something unexpected: In addition to the spots, there were quite a few stripes.
Sanjay Gubbi of the Nature Conservation Foundation and a member of the state wildlife board told NDTV, "We were basically working in Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary and Male Mahadeshwara Sanctuary mostly to document leopards but as a by-product we also got tigers in this wonderful landscape...Due to... Veerappan (operating in this area) over two decades, not much work was done."
The tigers were recorded with the help of camera traps and the results were encouraging. "We found MM Hills has about 10 to 12 tigers. Unfortunately, in Cauvery we got only two tigers during the sampling period so we could not do any statistical analysis as the sampling size was so small. However, the entire landscape of 2000 sq km has about 15 tigers," Mr Gubbi said.
A tiger reserve would get more funding and even better protection than a wildlife sanctuary and so the researchers are keen that the two areas be declared tiger reserves.
Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Ravi Ralph, told NDTV, "The proposal has already been sent to the government of Karnataka. Recently there is a very robust population which has been recorded so to provide them the required protection and conservation levels - this would be a very welcome step and we are very hopeful that these areas will be declared."
The National Tiger Conservation Authority is also in favour of the move - and so Karnataka, the state with the highest number of wild tigers in the country, may soon have two new tiger reserves.