Patna, April 4: Three months of this year have already elapsed but the authorities at Valmiki Tiger Reserve (VTR) do not seem to be in any hurry to monitor its big cats regularly.

In 2014 too, the authorities had failed to do the same as mandated by National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA). According to the phase IV of the all India mandatory tiger monitoring protocol, all tiger reserves must keep collecting photographs of movement of tigers using camera traps throughout the year, except monsoon. Camera traps for the purpose of overall monitoring were, however, not installed at VTR in 2014.

Officials at VTR are now claiming that the traps would be installed in October-November, this year.

"Initially, around 200 camera traps were planned to be installed in VTR in February-March for monitoring tiger movement. But it could not be done. Since incidents of jungle fire are common during summer and monsoon rainfall can damage cameras, we would not install camera traps till monsoon. The process is likely to be undertaken in October-November," said a senior VTR official in the rank of deputy director rank.

In November 2011, when NTCA decided to implement the phase-IV monitoring, which the tiger reserves were to conduct. The objective of the NTCA exercise was to at least obtain a minimum number of tigers in a tiger reserve. This process was introduced for keeping better estimates about the number of big cats on a regular basis.

While most tiger reserves in the country adhered to the NTCA mandate and installed the camera traps in 2012, VTR failed to do the same because of administrative callousness. The monitoring at VTR under phase IV was carried out in 2013.

Senior officials in the forest and environment department claimed that camera traps for monitoring under phase IV could not be installed in VTR in 2014 owing to delay in release of funds for procurement of the same.

According to the NTCA tiger census conducted in VTR in 2010, eight tigers were registered in around 440sqkm of the core area of the reserve. The number of tigers rose to 22 in the report on the first annual census conducted in 2013.

Later, the number of tigers was revised to 28 according to "Report on All India Tiger Estimation 2014" released by Prakash Javadekar, minister of environment, forests and climate change on January 20, this year.

Sources claimed that the rise in the number of the big cats from 22 to 28 was the result of extrapolation. Extrapolation is one of the techniques in the census works, wherein findings of the sample area are required to be extrapolated for coming up with final figures. 

VTR is located 289km north of Patna till the Terai region of the Himalayas and extends into the Royal Chitwan National Park and Parsa Wildlife Sanctuary of Nepal on its north and Uttar Pradesh on its west.