The Hindu : Centre okays radio-collaring of Sundarbans tigers

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 17, 2003

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National

Centre okays radio-collaring of Sundarbans tigers

Kultali (West Bengal) July 16. Popular myths about the territorial nature and man-eating habits of the famous Royal Bengal Tigers of the Sundarbans would now be set right with the world's first radio-collaring project on the wild cats being given the green signal by the Centre.

The Rs. 25 lakh project, which got the nod of the Project Tiger authorities recently, would use the same Global Positioning System (GPS)-based satellite technique that the United States used to select war targets in Iraq, the Conservator and Field Director of the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve, P. Vyas, told visiting reporters here.

"The idea is to tranquillise and attach radio collars to tigers that stray into human habitation and then track their movements through satellite radio signals.

This would help us make a thorough scientific probe into many behavioural patterns of the big cats," he said.

In the first phase, eight to 10 tigers would be radio-collared and tracked for about a year.

"The scientific data that we are looking at includes defining the home range of the tigers, their straying patterns and frequency of invading human dwellings in the islands,'' Mr. Vyas said.

Based on the movement patterns, tiger scat would also be collected to analyse the food habits of individual tigers and find a thread of commonality within the species, he added.

PTI

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