13-Jun-2019: Golden cat spotted in new colours
Golden is no longer the only colour the elusive Asiatic golden cat can be associated with. Its coat comes in five other shades in Arunachal Pradesh. The Asiatic golden cat (Catopuma temminckii) is listed as near threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of threatened species. It is found across eastern Nepal through north-eastern India to Indonesia.
Bhutan and China were known to have two morphs of the golden cat — one the colour of cinnamon and the other with markings similar to the ocelot, a small wild cat found in the Americas.
Indian scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), an international conservation charity, and University College London (UCL) have discovered six colour morphs of the golden cat in Dibang Valley of Arunachal Pradesh. The findings have contributed to an evolutionary puzzle because no other place on earth has so many colours of wild cats of the same species.
The Idu Mishmi tribe were aware of the different shades of the golden cat. The community believes that the cat, particularly its melanistic (dark pigmentation as opposed to albinism) morph, possesses great powers and thus observe a strict taboo on hunting the cat.
Within the six colour morphs recorded, an entirely new colour morph was also found in one of the community-owned forests. The “tightly-rosetted” morph named after the leopard-like rosettes on the coat, now sits alongside cinnamon, melanistic, gray, golden, and ocelot types.
Camouflage benefits: ZSL scientists believe that the wide variation displayed in the cat’s coats provides them with several ecological benefits such as occupying different habitats at different elevations — from wet tropical lowland forests to alpine scrubs — and providing camouflage while preying on pheasants and rabbits.
Colour morphs are thought to arise from random genetic mutations and take hold in the population through natural selection. In this region, scientists suspect that the phenomenon is driven by competition with other big cats such as tigers and clouded leopards. Being melanistic in the misty mountains during nocturnal hunts, for example, may mean they are better concealed from their prey; making them more efficient predators.
4-May-2019: Bajirao, last captive white tiger at Mumbai’s national park, dies at 18
The last captive white tiger inside Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) died of age-related complications. The animal was 18 years old.
The tiger, named Bajirao, was the eldest male in their enclosure and was unable to walk for the past 10 days. It is a great loss for the park as Bajirao was the last remaining captive albino tiger.
The average lifespan of tigers is between 14 and 16. Bajirao had been suffering for the past four years due to chronic ankylosis (a form of arthritis primarily causing inflammation and resulting in severe chronic pain). His elbow joint had disappeared resulting in the formation of a single bone, which deterred him from walking.
Bajirao was born in SGNP in 2001 to tigress Renuka and tiger Siddharth, both white tigers brought from Aurangabad Zoo in 1999. While Renuka died in 2009 after being diagnosed with skin cancer at the age of 13, 20-year-old Siddharth died on June 4, 2015, due to old age. SGNP, since its inception, has had only four white tigers in captivity.
An expert advisory committee, comprising of senior veterinarians, both current and retired from SGNP and the Bombay Veterinary College (BVC), had been monitoring Bajirao’s health over the past four years. Bajirao’s carcass was burnt after the autopsy as per National Tiger Conservation Authority guidelines.
1-May-2019: Hangul’s future still hangs in the balance
A massive decline in the population of Kashmir’s iconic wildlife species, the Hangul (Cervus hanglu hanglu), also known as the Kashmir stag, continues to be a big concern as conservation efforts for the deer, going on for years, have not yielded any significant results so far.
Today, the Hangul, the state animal of Jammu & Kashmir, is restricted to the Dachigam National Park some 15 km north-west of Jammu & Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar.
From a population of 5,000 in the early 1900s, the Hangul’s numbers have constantly declined over the decades, making it largely confined to the 141 square kilometres of Dachigam National Park, although some studies suggest that small isolated Hangul herds of five to ten have been reported from adjoining areas of Dachigam which include Shikargah-Tral and the Overa-Aru Wildlife Sanctuary in south Kashmir.
The Hangul was once widely distributed in the mountains of Kashmir and parts of Chamba district in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh. But, now, the IUCN’s Red List has classified it as Critically Endangered and is similarly listed under the Species Recovery Programme of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the Environmental Information System (ENVIS) of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC).
The Hangul is considered equally significant to the state of Jammu & Kashmir as the tiger is to the whole of India. It is the only Asiatic survivor or sub-species of the European red deer. But the state animal’s decreasing population remains a big concern.
According to the latest survey in 2017, the population of Hangul is 182 in Dachigam and adjoining areas. Earlier population estimates suggest that there were 197 deer in 2004 and 186 in 2015. Results of the latest survey (2019 survey) being carried out presently are expected in a month or so. But experts don’t expect any positive change in the population growth of the Hangul.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red Data Book — which contains lists of species at risk of extinction — has declared the Hangul as one of three species that were critically endangered in Jammu and Kashmir. The other two are the Markhor — the world’s largest species of wild goat found in Kashmir and several regions of central Asia — and the Tibetan antelope or ‘Chiru’, found mostly in the mountainous regions of Mongolia and the Himalayas, where Jammu and Kashmir is mostly situated.
The Hangul is placed under Schedule I of the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and the J&K Wildlife Protection Act, 1978.
The biggest challenges which have been identified by experts in the way of conservation and population growth of Hangul are habitat fragmentation, predation and very low fawn-female ratio. The number of Hangul we have right now, is not up to the mark. Lack of desirable breeding and fawn survival is a grave concern for the population growth.
Another challenge is the male-female and fawn-adult disparity in the Hangul population. A decline in the Hangul’s population is mainly occurring due to low recruitment rate of fawns to adults. There is a female-biased ratio of 23 males to every 100 females. The female-biased ratio and the fawn to female ratio of 30:100 are the two main reasons for the declining numbers of Kashmir’s Hangul.
Fawns are also predated upon by the dogs of security forces deployed in forests and the dogs of nomads who graze their herds in areas which are Hangul habitats. Influx of livestock herds of nomadic communities in the Dachigam National Park has been a challenge for years now. After the closing down of their traditional routes leading to over a dozen alpine pastures (in Gurez) by the army after the inception of armed conflict in Kashmir, nomads have not been able to graze their herds in those pastures. So, they are taking their large herds of livestock to the upper reaches of Dachigam during summers.
Other dangers for the Hangul population include excessive predation of fawns by the Common Leopard, the Himalayan Black Bear and nomads’ dogs. This is in addition to continued Hangul summer habitat loss and degradation due to excessive livestock grazing in the upper Dachigam.
An important part of the conservation project for Hangul is to study the food habits, breeding patterns and movements of the species in and out of its habitat. Forest officials started it in 2013-14 by tagging the animals with satellite collars. They studied a male Hangul for 22 months by getting data continuously before that Hangul was “hunted down.” The team analysed the information of the mortality indicator in the collar and the circumstantial evidence established that the collared Hangul was predated upon. Presently, they are studying two female Hangul whose satellite collars have been giving data since May 2018 continuously.
A project for improving the population of the Hangul through ex-situ breeding is underway. The breeding centre, along with some infrastructure over a five-acre forested area in south Kashmir’s Shikargah-Tral was started a few years ago. But wildlife officials say that so far, they have not come across any appropriate parental stock. Wildlife department is looking for young parental stock which can breed naturally in the habitat where conducive conditions are created.
Considering the fact that Kashmir’s politicians find it hard to convince the security establishment about the withdrawal of security forces from ecologically-sensitive areas, the Hangul’s future very much hangs in balance.