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Movement and home range characteristics of reintroduced tiger (Panthera tigris) population in Panna Tiger Reserve, central India

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Abstract

Reintroduction of the tiger (Panthera tigris) has become imperative to address the extinction crisis and, it also provides new knowledge of the species biology as to how these animals explore and utilize new environments. We studied six reintroduced tigers and three of their offsprings in Panna Tiger Reserve, central India, focusing on exploration strategy, movement characteristics and spatio-temporal home range patterns. It was found that the release site had no influence on home range selection by the reintroduced tigers, regardless of the release method (soft or hard release) and origin (wild caught or raised in captivity). Although there was a high rate of initial movement, these animals exhibited strong site fidelity and territoriality subsequently. Mean (±SD) annual home ranges of male and female tigers were 132.7 km2 ± 9.0 and 73.6 km2 ± 9.6, respectively, and did not differ significantly across seasons. The home range sizes of males were among the largest in India and was also marginally larger for females. Comparison with previous telemetry study on historic tiger population in the same site suggests that the reintroduced animals behaved almost exactly the same way as that of native populations, offering support for reintroduction strategies which look to restore not only the species population but also ecosystem functions. The exploratory strategy and subsequent home range establishment by the reintroduced tigers offer novel insights on species behaviour in a new environment, with implication for future conservation strategies that consider translocation-based recovery of tiger populations in the range countries.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department (MPFD), Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) for conceiving and implementing the reintroduction project. We are also grateful to the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Government of India and the Chief Wildlife Warden, Madhya Pradesh for permissions to capture, translocation and radio collar tigers. We gratefully acknowledge PR Sinha, former Director of WII; Dr. H.S. Pabla, former Chief Wildlife Warden of MPFD; Dr. Rajesh Gopal and S.P. Yadav of NTCA; Dharmendra Shukla, former Principal Chief Conservator of Forests of MPFD; Dr. V.B. Mathur, Director and Dr. G.S. Rawat, Dean of WII for constant support and encouragement. Special thanks are due to all researches and volunteers: Ravi Parmar, Devi Pryadarshini, J Yogesh, M Naveen, Raja Raj Tilak, Rahul K, Arun Kumar, Sunil Kumar and Sunal K Roamin who had contributed during the reintroduction programme and monitoring of tigers. Panna Tiger Reserve Management Unit is acknowledged for facilitation, assistance and logistic support, including monitoring and protection to all animals during the study period. We also thank our field assistants Pappu, Rahup and Darshan Singh for their efforts in helping researchers to collect data. We thank Dr. Edward Narayan, Charls Stuart University, Australia for his critical review of the earlier version of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wildlife Institute of India, Chandrabani, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

    M. S. Sarkar, K. Ramesh, J. A. Johnson, S. Sen & P. Nigam

  2. Department of Zoology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    M. S. Sarkar & G. K. Saha

  3. Madhya Pradesh Forest Department, Panna, Madhya Pradesh, India

    S. Sen, S. K. Gupta & R. S. Murthy

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  1. M. S. Sarkar
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Correspondence to K. Ramesh.

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Information on reintroduction events and telemetry data used for home range estimates (DOCX 24 kb)

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Sarkar, M.S., Ramesh, K., Johnson, J.A. et al. Movement and home range characteristics of reintroduced tiger (Panthera tigris) population in Panna Tiger Reserve, central India. Eur J Wildl Res 62, 537–547 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-016-1026-9

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