Ooty: The week long post-monsoon animal population estimation and habitat evaluation at the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) is underway now.
Official sources at the reserve said that it is an annual exercise in the MTR woods. As per the National tiger conservation authority norms, the tiger reserves have to conduct animal population estimation and habitat evaluation once during the pre-monsoon and once in the post-monsoon period to assess the health of the habitat and the population of animals.
"For this purpose the MTR core region has been divided into 27 transect zones. The forest teams assisted by volunteers in different transect zones would study the movement of animals and the wealth of the prey base for the tiger and other carnivores and wealth of flora, fodder availability, water sources in the respective transects.
This would give a comprehensive data on the population and movement of tigers and also other animals in the MTR core zone in the post-monsoon period wherein the winter sets in," sources explained.
The data collected during the weeklong process would help compare it with the figures of the previous such estimation and to find out if there is any notable changes in any transects to study further and to take necessary remedial measures, if needed, sources maintained.
