Patna, Nov. 25: Scat analysis would be introduced as a tool to count big cats in all the 41 tiger reserves in the country.

Experts today started imparting training to the reserves’ field officials on the procedures of collection and preservation of tiger scat to be sent for DNA test for estimating the number of tigers at a two-day meeting convened by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA). The protocol and the timeline to be followed by the tiger reserves while conducting the tiger census work would also be discussed in the meeting.

As reported by The Telegraph in May, the annual estimation of the number of big cats in all the reserves has been made a compulsory exercise from this year. The annual estimation would be in addition to the quadrennial exercise, conducted across the country by the NTCA, for counting the tigers. Scat analysis would be a part of estimating the number of big cats in a reserve during the course of the annual exercise.

“Scat analysis would help in estimating the absolute number of tigers in a given reserve,” NTCA deputy inspector-general H.S. Negi told The Telegraph over phone from Delhi.

He, however, made it clear that using the scat analysis in the tiger estimation work would just be a parallel exercise. The existing practice of conducting this work through camera trap method would remain in vogue.

The officer said the NTCA was in the process of setting up a panel of experts for providing technical assistance to the reserves for conducting the annual exercise.

As far as monitoring of the exercise of the annual tiger census is concerned, experts from Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, and some other institutions would make a joint presentation in the two-day meeting to apprise the field officials of the details of this aspect of the census.

The timeline of completing different estimation related works would also be discussed in the meet. The reserve officials, too, would put forward their points in the meeting.

The field officials of Valmiki Tiger Reserve (VTR) would raise the issue of the estimated number of tigers projected in the latest tiger census report during their interaction with the NTCA officials and experts in the meeting.

“We want to raise this issue because extrapolation of the entire 750sqkm of tiger occupied area of VTR was not done while finalising the census results. The figures collected by camera trap in 444sqkm area was given as the total number of tigers in the reserve,” VTR director Santosh Tiwari said.