After years of militancy, Assam's Manas National Park heads back to big cat glory

After bearing the brunt of militancy and its impact for years, Manas National Park in western Assam seems to be heading back to its big cat glory.

Conservation efforts by NGOs and the forest department since the signing of the Bodoland Accord in 2003 have led to an increase in wildlife population in the national park. And the recent survey suggested that the tiger population in the park sharing border with Bhutan has doubled from 25 to 52 between 2010 and 2019.

"Manas today has come a long way in conservation of tigers and other animals, which is one of the few tiger reserves originally declared as ‘Project Tiger’ by the Government of India in 1972. The combined efforts of the government agencies, NGOs along the local communities have paid off well and resulted in doubling the number of tigers since 2010.

Today, the Manas NP has an estimated tiger population of 52 as per the study carried out in 2019. A minimum of 25 adult tigers was captured in all three ranges of the park, Bhuyanpara, Bansbari, and Panbari. More exciting is the fact that study in the first addition of Manas National Park, a newly added 360 sq km tiger habitats resulted in photo capture of three tigers in 2019," said Aaranyak, one of the biodiversity conservation groups associated with the Project Tiger in Manas, on Wednesday.

Aaranyak, WWF India, and several other grassroots level NGOs are part of the joint conservation efforts led by the park management and as per guidelines of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).

Spread over 950-sqkm, Manas National Park is contagious to the Royal Manas National Park of Bhutan and is also a Unesco Natural Heritage Site. Most of its areas having a tiger reserve, an elephant reserve, and a biosphere reserve falls under Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC), an autonomous Council in western Assam, an area that witnessed years of insurgency since the 1980s.

"During the conflict time, the park infrastructure was badly damaged. The whole park was left open due to a lack of patrol by forest staff out of fear of armed militants. This led to the thinning of populations of almost all species and loss of habitats due to severe human disturbances. While all the rhinos were poached by the time peace returned, most of the herbivores were killed for meat and tigers were poached and some moved to areas deeper in the Bhutan hills of the adjoining Royal Manas National Park," Aaranyak said.

In around 2005, local community organisations were promoted by park managers and BTC to safeguard the sanctity of the park which showed results over time. "The continuous scientific monitoring of tigers, prey animals, and habitats at Manas made the turnaround," it said.

"Manas has shown the world that doubling tiger numbers is possible since the historic commitment made by the heads of 13 tiger range countries in 2010 in The Tiger Summit held at St. Petersburg, Russia," Aaranyak said.