Bird Watching - Kanha National Park

Bird watching is one activity which attracts lot many people and numbers of serious and amateur bird watchers is increasing day by day. These colourful feathered friends of ours are very important in our ecological system and can be found almost everywhere. We have done plantation at our resort keeping in mind two things. Firstly, maximum trees being planted must be from local landscape. And, Secondly that the trees planted should be either fruiting or flowering once which attract our flying friends a lot.

Pied Myna enjoying Mulberry fruit
Kanha Village Eco Resort
Kanha National Park

Normally tourists come to Kanha National Park with sole intention to have an audience with the king - Tiger. But we feel to really enjoy a jungle we should see all those small and big animals, birds, insects which altogether keep it healthy. Any forests health depends on whole bio diversity working together and not only on any one species although presence of Tiger the stripped cat certainly shows that the forest patch is in best of its health.

Red Munia on Mulberry Tree
Kanha Tiger Reserve

This year Mulberry plants at our resort - Kanha Village Eco Resort have grown big and were full of black fruits which were attracting host of birds of different varieties. This gave us a chance to see even those birds we used to miss and increase our count of birds seen at the property and even take some good photographs. Here are a few photographs for all to see and enjoy.

Common Myna
Kanha National Park

By: Navneet Maheshwari, Kanha Village Eco Resort

Cleanliness Drive - Kanha National Park

Kanha National Park and Tiger Reserve is well known amongst wildlife lovers and general tourists alike, visited by tourists from all over the world. This tourist inflow has its own advantages and disadvantages. Certainly the local population has benefited a lot and their economic standard has improved with time. Although this has been a very slow process since earlier we had less awareness, even connectivity to Kanha was not very good as well as tourism infrastructure was very basic. But with time infrastructure for tourism has improved with it influx of tourists and development of local population.

Picking plastic and rags thrown by tourists and local people

With more tourists entering the national park certainly it will have some negative impact on the parks environment and disturb wildlife at times. But this in comparison with the awareness created and funding raised for protection and local population is very minimal.


All tourism areas have some issues which needs to be carefully understood and taken care of. Sustainable use of our natural resources and sustainable tourism should go hand in hand and this needs awareness and meticulous planning at all level. Kanha management has done this well and often tourists visiting the park can see and feel the difference in comparison to other national parks. Still, outside the national park especially with tourists and local population a lot needs to be done. One such issue is littering especially of plastic pouches, sachets and bottles. This issue has been raised amidst the lodge association and local people as well as park management many times but still no solution is visible.

Mr. Sanjeev Kulhalli, Director, Kanha Village Eco Resort
Picking up plastic pouches and rags

To create awareness amongst local people and tourists alike we decided to do a cleanliness drive from Khatia main gate onwards. We collected rugs, plastic pouches, etc, and burnt them in the evening. This was participated by Mr. Sanjeev Kulhalli, Director, Kanha Village Eco Resort and Member of Lodges Association executive committee, Mr. Karan Modi, Secretary, Lodges Association, Owner of Flame of teh Forest, myself, Krishna Jungle Resort and other staff and members of our lodges. We also requested the local public especially Dhabha units to take care and not to throw rubbish especially plastic on roads but to collect them at one place and burn after some time. It was bought to notice of all that plastic thrown around is eaten by animals harming them and also pollutes the local environment.


This was a small campaign which we are planning to do for coming weeks so as to create awareness amongst public at large. We will take up more issues with time and try to do our best keeping our responcibilities towards our environment and forests in mind especially towards our national animal Tiger and other denizens of forests.

Tiger - The King of Forest, whose home we are trying to protect.
Kanha National Park

By: Navneet Maheshwari, Owner, Kanha Village Eco Resort

Tiger of Kanha

Munna - is dominent male in Kanha zone

Here is Munna, the dominent male of Kanha zone of Kanha Tiger Reserve. His territory is very large after death of Konda he has taken up some of his area also. He is almost 10 years old and was thought to have either left his territory or died after a fight with other male since he was no where to be seen for almost a month.

Munna - Sitting under bamboo shade

He was seen a few days back and bought back smile on every ones face. Here he was sitting under Bamboo's shade and cooling off when he was seen by the Mahouts and a Tiger show was declared.

Mr. John Alexender Watson, Ms. Sarah White, Ms. Brinda and other guests from New Zealand and United Kingdom staying at Kanha Village Eco Resort got a chance to see Munna and click a few photographs.

Sighting a tiger in the wild is an experience in itself, something which cannot be expressed but only felt. Kanha National Park is home to around 60 Tigers (excluding young ones). We go on Gypsy Safari to see these beautiful striped cats. It is only when you see one of your own in the wildreness of Kanha that you may appreciate why our ancestors used to call it God or Vehicle of Goddess.

Survey of tiger reserves to check corridors for movement



Tiger at Kanha National Park
(Photograph by Navneet Maheshwari, Kanha Village Eco Resort)

 Dehradun : Taking cognisance of the fact that the elephant problem in Uttarakhand had reached jumbo proportions because the forest corridors used by the pachyderms for migration had been lost to construction and developmental projects, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) intends getting a satellite survey done of all the 41 tiger reserves in the country to check the corridors that may have been lost due to construction activity.


The survey will be undertaken by the Forest Survey of India some time in the middle of this year. The main purpose of it will be to check whether the corridors that were in the forest divisions of the tiger reserves for the movement of the felines are still in tact, or they have been lost to the rampant construction that is taking place in and around these resorts.

Informed sources said that it had been brought to the notice of the NTCA that rampant construction had been done within and in the periphery of the Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand , which had witnessed a considerable increase in the number of tigers over the past few years. The construction, of resorts in particular, was of all the more concern as they were coming up without due sanction from the forest authorities and were a threat to the wildlife in the region, they claimed.

They said that a survey had been done of the tiger population in the country in 2010, which had shown a healthy trend that there was an increase of almost 300 in the feline population in the country. But was damning was the fact that the survey also indicated that there was decline in the area of the tiger habitat, which meant little space for the felines, which are territorial animals.

Sources said that the survey would focus on what is the exact area of forest cover in the tiger reserves of the country and taking the feline numbers is it adequate to meet their territorial and other requirements; what are the changes that have taken place in the tiger reserves during the past two decades and how many corridors in these reserves have been lost and for what reasons.

They said that it was a matter of great concern that not only the population but activity in and around the tiger reserves was also on the rise which would affect the tiger conservation programme over the years. A large number of efforts have been put in the tiger conservation project in the past few years, and these are showing positive results, but the good work was in for a setback due to human activity in and around the reserves, they contended.

It may be mentioned here, that because of the forest corridors which were used by the elephant herds for migration in the Uttarakhand forests having been lost to development activities and rampant construction over the years, having been lost, the pachyderms were confined in pockets forcing them into direct conflict with man.

A recent study undertaken by the Wildlife Institute of India indicated that elephant-man conflict in Uttarakhand had increased manifold after 2001 and the pachyderms had killed 95 persons and injured another 65 during this period. There was also an increase in the number of incidents of wild herds entering agricultural fields and destroying the crops, because of which there were occasions when villagers also killed some elephants.

http://hillpost.in/2012/02/25/survey-of-tiger-reserves-to-check-corridors-for-movement/

India should create wildlife cadre to protect tigers: Valmik Thapar

BANGKOK: India should step up efforts to revamp its forest service and create a separate wildlife cadre for tigers which can work in partnership with other agencies to protect the animal, a top conservationist has said.
Valmik Thapar, an Indian conservationist, is of the view that when the British left India they also left behind the Indian Forest Service, whose primary duty was cutting of forests and use of forests.
"That scenario has changed now, it is not only about protecting the forest but also protecting its wildlife," he said adding that wildlife protection was a very tiny part of the service and not sufficient and called for a wildlife cadre.
"If India wants more landscape for tigers, a separate cadre has to be carved," he said on the sidelines of a Tiger protection conference here. "The time has come for change, new partnerships without that tigers won't be alive," he told PTI.
The Tiger conference organised by the UN office of Drugs and Crime saw police and customs heads and Tiger conservationists from 13 Asian countries agreeing to tighten controls and improve cross border cooperation to curb the illegal smuggling of tigers and other critically endangered species.
"We must take immediate and urgent action to save these magnificent animals from extinction," Kunio Mikuriya, Secretary General of the World Customs Organisation said.
Thapar said poaching was linked to a government. "Poaching accelerate, when there is a bad and weak government as poachers exploit these gaps," he said, adding that bad governance and bad political leadership also led to the endangerment of animal species.
He felt that India's forest department did not like change. "We need to rethink otherwise we have no hope," he lamented. Meanwhile, the Global Tiger Initiative of the World Bank said India faced major challenges in sustaining the integrity and inviolability of core tiger habitats and corridors (mounting pressures from roads, mining and extraction industries).
It said that one billion US dollars were needed to relocate villages out of the core areas. Another challenge was in maintaining tiger occupancy in habitats outside tiger reserves and noted there was a 20 per cent in tiger occupancy observed habitats outside designated tiger reserves. A third challenge according to the Tiger Initiative was managing human-wildlife relationships noting there had been increased tiger-human conflict in some landscapes.

However the Global Initiative also noted that India had made some major achievements. These included addition of 2,500 km2 of new tiger habitat by establishing two new Tiger Reserves bringing a total of 54,656 Km2 under 41 Tiger reserves. This represented a five per cent increase in tiger habitat under protection, it said adding that five more tiger reserves were under establishment and another six were proposed.

It said across the country, tiger and prey estimations had recorded a modest increase in tiger numbers and that wildlife corridors connecting critical tiger breeding areas had been identified and published.
"If we lose an emblematic species like the Tiger, mankind will be acknowledging that it is prepared to lose any animal on the planet. This must not be allowed to happen," Yury Fedotov, Executive Director of the UNODC told the conference adding that "by our actions we must show that we have the capacity, the ability and the commitment to protect other species living on this planet."
 
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/flora-fauna/India-should-create-wildlife-cadre-to-protect-tigers-Valmik-Thapar/articleshow/11947860.cms