From CK Nayak
NEW DELHI: India’s proud place in the world tiger map moved up with the sighting of the rare Siberian or Amur tigers in the upper reaches of Arunachal Pradesh after a three-year survey.
India’s 50 tiger reserves are home to 70 percent of the wild cats in the world and the total number of tigers has risen to 3,890 in 2016, according to World Wildlife Fund and Global Tiger Forum.
But spotting of as many as 11 Amur tigers in the upper reaches of Dibang valley recently has brought cheers to wildlife enthusiasts since this is for the first time Siberian or Amur tigers found only in snow capped mountains of Russia and China have been located here.
The surveyors carried out the survey in 330 square km out of the 4,000 sq km of the Dibang sanctuary – and kept it limited to the river valleys where they found 11 Amur tigers, including two cubs. The Dibang Wildlife Sanctuary – located in the Dibang Valley District and surrounded by China in the north and east – mostly extends over the Mishmi Hills.
Interestingly, the area is not a designated tiger reserve but more tigers are found here than in other designated tiger reserves in Arunachal Pradesh such as Pakke, Namdapha and Kamlang. Presence of Amur or Siberian tigers is also not limited to the extreme upper reaches but even at lower heights in snowy areas, the survey found.
The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris tigris or Panthera tigris altaica) is found in the Far East, particularly the Russian Far East and Northeast China. This population inhabits mainly the Sikhote Alin mountain region in southwest Primorye Province in the Russian Far East.
The Siberian tiger once ranged throughout Korea, north China, Russian Far East, and eastern Mongolia. It is also called Amur tiger, Manchurian tiger, Korean tiger and Ussurian tiger, depending on the region where it is found.
In 2012, three tiger cubs were found in the upper reaches of Dibang valley by local Mishmi tribes and moved to the zoo. But the credit for the hunted big cat goes to the local tribes, Idu Mishmis. The only reason tigers continue to exist here and in such great numbers is because the tribe not only respects the animal but have many mythological beliefs regarding it.
No one really knew how the cubs had landed up in the valley there but there were hints of their presence – sometimes anecdotal, often mythological but never scientific. Now with cameras trapping the 11 tigers with cubs’, presence of Amur tigers in this part of the world has been proved.
The Idu Mishmi tribe – the 12,000-strong sub-tribe of the ethnic Mishmis of Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh – reveres tigers. Following the capture of the cubs a preliminary survey was carried out in 2014.
Believed to occupy only lower altitudes, studies of tigers occupying higher reaches are not very common. However, seeing the Mishmi Hills potential, the NTCA sanctioned another survey in 2015, again long term and higher up.
Three years of trekking to the remotest reaches of the Mishmi Hills and setting up of 108 camera traps, the survey found tigers were at 3,246m and 3,630m. The latter elevation is the highest photographic evidence of tiger presence in the Indian part of the Eastern Himalayas.
In neighbouring Bhutan, there has been recorded evidence of tigers up to analtitude of 4,200m. In Western Himalayan range, in the forests of Uttarakhand, tigers have been spotted at around 4,000 m too.
The survey has revealed the first photographic evidence of tigers in the snow, after Russia’s Amur tigers. There are nine recorded sub-species of tigers in the world: Sumatran, Amur (Siberian), Indian (Bengal), South China, Malayan, Indo-Chinese. Three (Caspian, Javan and Bali) are extinct.
The Siberian tiger is reddish-rusty or rusty-yellow in colour with narrow black transverse stripes. It has an extended supple body standing on rather short legs with a fairly long tail.
The Siberian tiger is considered to be the largest in size and heavier. In 2005, a group of Russian, American and Indian zoologists published an analysis of historical and contemporary data on body weights of wild and captive tigers, both female and male across all subspecies.
Siberian tigers are known to travel up to 1,000 km (620 mi), a distance that marks the exchange limit over ecologically unbroken country. The average lifespan for Siberian tigers ranges from 16-18 years in wild and up to 25 years in captivity.