HYDERABAD: The Amrabad tiger reserve in Telangana has a new resident, an Indian bison or gaur, which wandered into the Nallamala forests of the reserve in Nagarkurnool district, traversing a few hundred kilometres of open plains, passing through villages and towns, and crossing highways, all the way from a forest in Karnataka.
The gaur was first spotted deep inside the core area of the tiger reserve near the Bourapur Chenchu hamlet, surprising local forest officials as the animal has never been recorded in the area. “We started working backwards, made inquiries, and found that it was first noticed near Narayanpet,” Rohit Gopidi, the divisional forest officer of the reserve, said.
A group of forest department staff, on a regular patrol, first saw the gaur on the forest road near Bourapur hamlet in January. “This was a real surprise as this was the last thing we expected to see in Amrabad,” the reserve’s biologist, D. Mahender Reddy, said, adding “ever since, we have been monitoring its movements inside the reserve.”
After it somehow slipped inside the tiger reserve unnoticed — the gaur is the largest of the bovines in the world — the solitary animal, a male, appears to have settled down in the Bourapuram forest, for now. “The gaur is typically a plains animal, and though it has never been recorded in Amrabad Tiger Reserve, we are excited that it came here,” Rohit Gopidi said.
While monitoring its movements has been much easier inside the reserve, with camera trap images helping the forest staff keep track of its movements, it was not easy to trace its origin.
“We started going through all the camera trap data and found that it reached the core area from Achampet town. Prior to that, we managed to trace its movements and found that it crossed farmland and villages near the Dindi reservoir before reaching Achampet, and then wandered north and got into the forest,” Mahender Reddy said.
“We could trace its movements all the way back to Narayanpet, to a location between Mahbubnagar and Devarakadra, to the south of Kalwakurthy town, then it somehow, from there, made its way to Achampet, and then into the forest,” Mahender Reddy said.
“We think it set off on its long walk from forests in Karnataka near Narayanpet,” he said.
Forest officials have no idea where the gaur, believed to weigh between 300 and 400 kg, will head next, or if will settle down in the tiger reserve. It is not uncommon for gaur males to strike out on their own in search of females, but the one now in the Amrabad reserve will likely be all by itself if it chooses to settle down in the reserve.
The gaur has few natural predators, and among those in Amrabad, only the tiger is its natural enemy.
