Urgent steps needed to save Nilgiri tahrs

The Hindu, September 15, 2006

Munnar: How many Nilgiri tahrs are there in the wild? According to a paper presented at the fourth World Congress on Mountain Ungulates, the present population of the Nilgiri tahr is likely to be much lower than what is generally believed. The paper, presented by R.J. Ranjit, P.S. Easa, K. Ramkumar, Pratheesh C. Mammen and Mohan Alembath, states that the long quoted figures of 2,000-2,500 animals in the wild seem to be an overestimation.

Limited presence

The Nilgiri tahr is among the few species of mountain goats that have adapted to a cold and wet tropical environment. Today, the endemic and endangered tahr is limited to a very small geographical area that does not exceed five per cent of the Western Ghats. The reason for this rather local distribution is the preference for a habitat that is predominantly of grassland sheltered by steep rocky cliff that receives over 1,500 mm of rainfall annually and enjoys dry season. Such a tropical habitat is restricted to just six or seven high altitude landscapes of the south Western Ghats.

The current geographical range of the tahr is less than 400 km north-south, between the Nilgiri Hills and Kanyakumari Hills in the Western Ghats. Over the short range and within the six identified tahr landscapes, 18 locations continue to support small to large populations of the tahr. Local populations vary in size between 30 and 500 animals. Estimates made at various times during the last 30 years have placed the population between 2,000 and 2,500.

Call for research

According to A.J.T. Johnsingh of the Nature Conservation Society, research should be conducted in many more species that have been left uncovered. India's rich diversity of mountain ungulates includes 19 species, belonging to 12 genera, four families and two orders. The quantum of ecological research on the animals varies, with only five species being relatively well studied. In general, species that are rare and occur in physically or administratively inaccessible areas have been less researched.

Conservation also varies with six species numbering less than 1,000 and three between 1,000 and 2,000.

Fragmented population

In his plenary talk, Dr. Johnsingh said the Tibetan gazelle with a fragmented population of less than 200 in Ladakh and North Sikkim was on the verge of extinction. The species is in need of urgent participatory species recovery programme. Listing out the ungulates that face threat in India, Dr. Johnsingh said conservation requisites for the mountain ungulates differ.

International cooperation can help safeguard many of the species.

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Threatened ungulates in focus

Anand Parthasarathy
TheHindu, September 12, 2006

An international conference in Munnar on the Nilgiri tahr and its cousins

They are sometimes horned, always hooved and herbivorous. They graze the slippery slopes of the world's hilly, and occasionally snow-covered, grasslands. They form a global family of mammals known as ungulates that is under increasing threat from war, encroachment or human greed.

For three days from September 13, over 100 naturalists from a dozen nations will meet at Munnar, Kerala, home to arguably the best conserved of the Indian ungulates the Nilgiri tahr.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is holding the World Congress on Mountain Ungulates (WCMU), the fourth since 1989 and the first in Asia, near the Eravikulam National Park. The park, with its tropical grassland ecosystem, is today home to over 700 of the 2,000-odd tahr that are in the Anamalai region of the Western Ghats.

"Conservation efforts are afoot in over 20 countries and they target such diverse ungulates like the Tibetan gazelle and the yak in Ladakh; the Iberian Ibex in Portugal; and its Nubian cousin in Yemen; the Alpine chamois in Italy and Switzerland; the Rocky Mountain goat of Canada and the U.S. and the Korean goral," explains Mohan Alembath, president of the Nilgiri Tahr Trust.

He is a conservationist who served the Kerala Forest Department until 2001. During a nine-year tenure as Wild Life Warden, he helped make Eravikulam one of the rare success stories in conservation this country has seen.

The event is hosted by the Munnar-based High Range Wildlife and Environment Preservation Association, largely staffed by nature-loving members of the Tata Tea plantations that dominate the Kannan Devan Hills.

Partnership

The partnership between the Association and the State Forest Department has been a model of public-private cooperation in conservation.

The delegates will be able to assess the results first-hand: the tahr's calving season is just over and the fresh count is just in. Their visit also coincides with the 12-yearly flowering of the neela kurinji, which is turning the Munnar hills into a blue blaze of colour.

Discussions

The discussions will include the need to create a Pamir Peace Park where China, Pakistan and Afghanistan meet, to help conserve the Marco Polo sheep now less than 6,000 in number.

It will discuss why the Swedish moose is under threat from its most formidable predator, the European brown bear.

It will consider what the disturbed environment in Kashmir is doing to the lifestyle and very existence of the Kashmir stag or hangul.

Hopefully, the exchange of experience and results will help the world's hooved grazers cling on a mite more firmly to their precarious and increasingly threatened grazing lands.

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