Valmiki Tiger Reserve. Telegraph picture

Patna, May 21: Valmiki Tiger Reserve (VTR) has failed to count its big cats in the introductory year of the annual tiger census. The drive was to be conducted by the management of tiger reserves across the country.

VTR’s failure on this front has not gone down well with the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) bosses, who plan to raise this issue with the top leadership in the state. “We will bring this matter to the notice of the Bihar chief minister because the reserve’s failure to provide the tiger count estimate would adversely hamper our move of keeping better tabs on the condition of tigers across the country,” NTCA member secretary Rajesh Gopal told The Telegraph over phone from Delhi.

He said every tiger reserve of the country had signed a memorandum of understanding for conducting this annual exercise and its violation was a serious issue. NTCA, after consultation with tiger reserves of the country, introduced the system in November last year to keep better estimate of the number of big cats on a regular basis, as the national level tiger census, conducted by NTCA, is a quadrennial exercise.

Those responsible for the VTR management, however, refused to take the blame for this failure. “We had sent three of our field staff to take training in use of camera traps because estimation work had to be done using camera-trapping method. But we did not have enough number of camera traps to conduct the estimation work according to NTCA guidelines,” VTR director Santosh Tiwari said.

At present, VTR has at its disposal around 20 pairs of camera traps against a requirement for 100 additional pairs for conducting the estimation work in the 840sqkm reserve.

Tiwari spoke of plans to purchase camera traps from the second instalment of Rs 54 lakh NTCA funds for 2011-12 but it was not sanctioned, jeopardising the camera trap plan.

Replying to why the VTR management did not outsource the work of compiling estimates to any other agency with expertise, Tiwari said such decisions were taken by the headquarters.

Bosses sitting in the headquarters claimed that efforts were on to engage agencies. “We are seized with the issue and as soon as we get NTCA funds for the current fiscal, cameras would be purchased and estimation work would be carried out,” chief wildlife warden D.K. Shukla said.

Replying to a query about the NTCA’s failure to provide second trench of funds to VTR during 2011-12, its member secretary said the VTR management was responsible for this situation as the utilisation certificates submitted by it were not complete.