Orissa: Nandankanan Zoo to go for planned tiger breeding

Bhubaneswar, Sep 1: With 28 tigers, 18 of them normal and the rest white, the Nandankanan Zoo has chalked out a planned breeding programme for the tigers to maintain a viable population in the zoo.

Zoo Director Ajit Kumar Pattnaik said it was imperative to go for planned breeding in the zoo as the youngest group tiger is now four years old.

He said, ''We are going for breeding of tigers after careful planning and genetic analysis,'' adding that in any case the zoo will meet the guidelines of CZA and maintain the stipulated number through exchange of animals with other zoos.

During early 1980s, zoo managers had recognised that their contribution to conservation could best be made through regional and international cooperative breeding programs and collaborations with in-situ conservation programmes.

The World Conservation Union (IUCN, 1987) has also recognised the critical value of captive breeding programmes. Captive populations of endangered species are managed to retain high levels of genetic diversity over long periods.

Mr Pattnaik said inbreeding reduces reproduction and survival in essentially all well-studied naturally out breeding species and to a lesser extent in selfing species.

Genetic management of captive populations is essential for successful captive breeding which could be achieved through maximum avoidance of inbreeding.

The Nandankanan Zoo director said the kinship of two individuals is the probability that two alleles taken at random, one from each, will be identical by descent. He said a careful breeding plan is initiated through calculation of the inbreeding coefficients of individuals through observation of their pedigrees. This has been derived through a simple mathematical formula.

The objective has been to come up with a breeding plan for the tigers and to suggest which pairs of animals should be bred so that the offsprings have the minimum inbreeding coefficient.

In Nandankanan the wild gene source is founded by three wild-caught tigers named as Pradeep, Sikha and Rani and one white female Subhra of the Rewa lineage, received from the Delhi Zoo.

He said on analysis of the breeding coefficient based on the pedigree, the several pairs in the Nandankanan Zoo were found to be viable as the mean kinship.

Mr Pattnaik said while choosing a pair for breeding, it would be kept in mind that white tigers should not be mated with white tigers.

In order to preserve maximum genetic diversity, he said it has been planned to pair Anusuya with Kisan.

UNI