Number of wild animals goes up in Bandipur Tiger Reserve

The number of wild animals in Bandipur Tiger Reserve has increased significantly in the last few years.

Certain measures, taken by the forest department since decades, have yielded results. Now, it has become a challenging task for the department to maintain vast resources, like wildlife and forests.

According to Bandipur Project Tiger director S R Natesh, the Bandipur Tiger Reserve has 2,500 elephants, 173 tigers and more than 300 leopards in 1,020 square km. Apart from these, the headcount of deer, bison and other animals have increased, he added.

According to the 2019 Tiger Census, there were 524 tigers in Karnataka. With this, the state stands second in the country in terms of tiger population.

According to the authorities, the Bandipur forest has 10 more tigers. But, they are left out from the survey due to some technical issues.

The state has a total of 6,049 wild elephants and 2,500 of them are in Bandipur.

According to the officials, several measures taken by the forest department, since the last three decades, have resulted in the improvement in the population of animals.

The department officials and the staffers accorded priority to the local people and took them into confidence for all conservation initiatives. The local tribals were roped in for the services in the forest.

The department has made efforts to control forest fire, which used to damage vegetation. However, a major forest fire in 2018 damaged a few hundred acres of vegetation. But, since then, no major fire has been reported.