1 female and 2 male tigers present in Palamau Tiger Reserve

Ranchi, Aug 06: A survey by the Jharkhand forest department has indicated the presence of tigers at the Palamau Tiger Reserve (PTR), barely a week after a nationwide estimate found no trace of the big cats in the sanctuary, a senior official said. The All India Tiger Estimation Report-2018, released on July 29, did not register the existence of tigers at the PTR.

"Marks about the presence of two tigers and one tigress were found during the survey at the reserve, spread over 1,124 sq km," Additional Chief Secretary (Forests, Environment, and Climate Change) Indu Shekhar Chaturvedi said. Pugmarks and tiger scats are considered as evidence about the presence of tigers in an area.

Indications of the presence of big cats were also found in Hazaribag, and Saranda forest in West Singhbhum district, Chaturvedi said. The Tiger Habitat Zone, through which the animals move, passes through Hazaribag, Chatra, Lohardaga, and Palamau in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

On the initiatives taken up by the state government, he said, "Plantation, environment protection along with forests and wildlife are among the most important priorities of the government."

"Extensive and large-scale plantations have been carried out in the last four-and-a-half years, and demarcation of forests and banning the cutting of trees have also been done, the official said.

Planting of 12,09,89,185 saplings since 2015 has resulted in an increase of forest cover to 33.21 percent of the total area of the state, achieving the target set in the National Forest Policy, he said.

Plantation has also been undertaken beyond the forest region, under the Chief Minister's Jan Van Yojana, starting 2016-17," he said.

Under the scheme, where 75 percent of the cost of the plantation is provided by the state government to the beneficiaries, 6.60 lakh saplings have been planted till now, Chaturvedi said. A total of 1,823 farmers have benefitted from this scheme, he said.