By Our Reporter
Shillong: The State Forest department has requested the Central Government to direct the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun to conduct a detailed survey of the latest tiger population in the State.
Talking to The Shillong Times here on Sunday, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest VK Nautiyal said the State had sought the detailed tiger survey few months back and the department was awaiting response from the Central Government.
The number of tigers in the State was 33 in 1993 while in 1998 it went up to 69 and again the number came down to 47 in 2002.
According to Nautiyal, the tiger census should be conducted with a modern gadget called camera trap to find out the exact number of tigers in the State as the old conventional way of census through pug marks is not satisfactory.
It may be mentioned that a research, conducted recently by Wildlife Institute of India (WII), had said that around 1411 tigers are believed to be alive in the country. However, only Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram from the North-East were included in the census conducted by the WII.
Pointing out that there is every possibility that tigers are present in the hilly State, the official said many tigers from Assam must be coming to Meghalaya and vice versa.
“Many years back even I had seen a tiger in Nongkhyllem area,” he added.
The exact number of tigers that still roam free in these hills is yet to be ascertained while the main cause for the dwindling tiger population is mainly due to rampant deforestation resulting in the loss of habitat of the tigers and other variety of wild animals in the State.
