Author: Rishin | Naturalist at Svasara

The tiger numbers have been witnessing a rise in Tadoba and in their search for more areas they often settle in the buffer areas of the reserve. For this reason, buffers have played a crucial role in conservation of Tadoba’s biodiversity. Some examples of tigers that have made buffers their home include the oldest tiger of Tadoba – Waghdoh, Madhuri, Junabai, Jharni etc.

Opening buffers for tourism has many benefits. Local disturbances to the forest reduces because of planned tourism. Alizanza and Kolara Buffer for this reason has experienced such success. These additional zones also reduce tourist pressure on limited routes in core. And, because the forest is contiguous, tourists have been generally happy sighting the same animals. In some instances, blue bull sighting in fact is higher in buffer compared to core.

Buffer tourism is great for the local economy as well as additional guides and gypsy operators get an opportunity to reap in the benefits of wildlife tourism. This is always a positive contribution reducing the risk of alternative money-making avenues like poaching, illegal tree / bamboo cutting etc.

So next time you are planning a trip to Tadoba, do consider opting for a buffer zone safari too. Not only will you experience a different part of the reserve and contribute to forest conservation, but you will also positively touch the lives of additional locals from Tadoba’s adjoining villages.

Header Image Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nagpur/tadoba-to-open-5-new-gates-in-buffer-to-boost-ecotourism/articleshow/67763293.cms

Buffer Zone Photographs from our Archive:

The guest came a little unexpectedly and we were a little perplexed, as there were no safaris available. After interacting with her, we gathered that she is a solo traveller and comes to India every year; but has not seen a tiger ever and she has no idea about the way safari bookings etc. work. After some discussions, we informed her that we would be able to arrange one core and two buffer safaris. She promptly said yes! And further discussions led to the revelation that I have met her in Majuli, Assam two years back. A bit more pressure on me to assure her of a good experience in Tadoba, and the jungle has always helped me in these situations.

First AM safari, we missed a tiger early in the morning! But, a little later the Junabai female and her three cubs appeared from the bush, checked the tree along with the mother and then disappeared back in the woods. In the afternoon, there were no clues about them, so we decided to check the other parts of the buffer and got lucky with a sighting of another tigress; this one belonged to the Devdoh clan. Next morning, we entered the core with the intention to look for wild dogs, as she has never seen them but heard a lot about them. While having breakfast at the Khatoda gate, we got the good news of wild dogs and for her sheer delight, we managed to sight a pack of six dholes. The 85-year old lady was all smiles and I was thanking mother nature for all the blessings.

Dorothy Knott loves India and her smile, her happiness gave a good kick for me!

Pic & Text Courtesy: Rishin Basu Roy, Svasara Naturalist

Header Image, Edit Courtesy: Anjan Lal, Svasara Guest

It was a normal afternoon safari. After the excitement of the morning sighting of T-54 (Matkasur), the dominant male tiger of the tourism zone we were thinking about enjoying the forest. In the morning it was a relatively late move by the big male and when we started driving back to the exit gate where he secured a place near the waterhole under the shade of a big Jamun tree. One classic picture that depicts the arrival of summer in this forest! We decided to check his whereabouts in the afternoon and planned to explore the other parts of the forest later on. We climbed up the Jamunbodi road to reach the gallery view of  Jamunbodi. We reached, he was still lying down and the guest was expressing his disbelief about how lazy a tiger can be. Five hours! and he was still there… Then suddenly within five-minutes of our arrival he stood up, looked behind and started walking towards the back. I was telling the guest that it was a good decision that we decided to check on him.

Little did we know what was in store for us for the next half-an-hour. As soon as he went away from our view a long stress call of a sloth bear was heard. We got alert and decided to check. We were overwhelmed by the face-off sight of a mother sloth bear and a sub adult sloth bear with T-54. The desperate mother sloth bear came in between T54 and her sub adult. A royal rumble started. The sub adult left the place with  the agony of loosing its mother. We could hear the deep sounds coming from the back while the mamma bear showed us what it takes to be a mother and how desperate a mother can be to defend her offspring. T-54 tried his best to knock her down and there was moment of 5 minutes when we thought the mother had given up as she lay still in the trap of T-54. Then the magic started one or two ‘Jhatkas’ (sudden movements) ensured us the mother bear was not giving up and then she got herself free from the jaw and paw of T-54. With great disbelief we saw her giving a full aggressive  blow to T-54 and the unique design of the sloth bear hair allowed her to prevent T-54 from giving her a killer bite. With the evolutionary adaptive strategy the bear’s most vulnerable part of the body is its snout and the chest. She rolled into a fur ball and didn’t allow T-54 to access that part of her body. Then with a full thrush she gave a tight slap and went away from the T-54.

For this entire period of the show there was not a single sound from the jeeps around. Everyone was glued to the fighting duo and the air was filled with the sound of the Bear and the tiger. A sighting of a lifetime indeed which will remain etched in the memory of all the spectators who were there.

Blog Write-Up: #RishinBasuRoy #SvasaraNaturalist

Pic Credits: #PrasunMajumdar #SvasaraNaturalist

The silk that made India famous! The silk that created the trade route, the silk that generated revenue by creating employment. Silk that personifies Indian women and men. The creator of the raw material is the Tussar Silk Moth. Unlike the mulberry silk moth, tussar silk moth is not reared in captivity. Hence Tussar Silk is also known as wild silk or peace silk. This is because silk is only extracted from the cocoon once the adult moth emerges. I.e., the larvae are not killed inside the cocoon to obtain the silk.

Location: Svasara Jungle Lodge, Tadoba, Maharashtra, India

Credits: Text – Rishin, Svasara Naturalist, Photographs – Sanjay Ramachandran, Identification – Prasun, Svasara Naturalist, Sighting – Raju, Svasara Safari Driver & Tracker

Maya Enchants, Maya is the crowd puller, Maya generates economy for this place, Maya made Tadoba popular to the extent that whenever we talk about Tadoba Maya’s name definitely comes up.

If she goes missing for a few days we start feeling helpless, because she has garnered a larger than life fame! Her contribution is beyond what we can see. Her contribution towards her own stripes is TOO enormous. She is amazing because since she became an adult, almost all the male tigers of Tadoba started venturing into her territory. This trend is still continued if we look into the different males who have visited her in the three years of her life, it adds up to 6 to 7 different males. There were days when she was sighted with 2 to 3 different males in a single day. But she managed well, then she had a first litter of cubs, she in fact lost her first litter, she slowly matured as tigress, as a mother, she kept allowing the male tigers to visit her, then she had her next litter.

BIG ? Who is the father of her cubs? Amidst utter confusion and too much speculation, she kept her cubs well secured, then she declared the identity of their father. Surprise again! she went for the “Handicap principle” in that none of the supposedly cool dudes got the chance to father her cubs. Then on she kept on amazing us by the way she reared her cubs and kept meeting all the “visitors” be it tourist or the different striped males. But the story doesn’t end there, because of her the other females neighboring her territory got the chance to rear their cubs without being bothered too much by the other males. In a crisis period of gender imbalance in the tiger community that is a huge contribution and for me just because of that fact she is one of those most amazing tigresses I have seen.

p.s. Now a days, the visitors seem to be already entrapped in Maya’s aura way before seeing her, it is frequent request to us naturalists at svasara to especially see “Maya” even if they have had the good luck of sighting other tigers.

To follow new updates about her and see her beautiful pictures, please see and like her photo album Maya (P2/T12), the reigning Queen of Pandharpauni on our facebook page.

I am indeed lucky with her…She is very different than her neighbor Maya. She looks more composed more cautious… My golden sighting of her happened on 6th November 2014 635 AM when she came to jamni village school to get her cubs perhaps admitted in the school! I have had indeed fortunate luck to see her cubs in the wild.

Her male cub from the first litter unfortunately died but the female cub is surviving well. It had been a while since seeing her with cubs. And then exactly two years later, on 6^th November 2016, I found her sitting with her cubs on the side of the road. I watched them for a while then I photographed a few memories and returned happily to the lodge.

Unlike Maya, Choti Tara is not so secretive about the father of the cubs, last time she introduced “Gabbar” as the father and this time it was “Matkasur.” She definitely likes the heroes to get acquainted with the cubs. This is such a happy memory which made me feel special at the same time…thinking about it a lot raised a question in my mind, why two cubs on both occasions?

Generally the other females in and around the tourism zone has a higher number per litter three to four then why her only two? Both the occasions, the father of her cubs is different so this outcome does not seem to be from the father side…Few more questions…Her pattern way of movement, coming out with her cubs, the basic routine of her nurturing the young ones shows that she is more confident now and maybe she understood that more than the number, the quality of the young is important. The competition, the pressure everything is increasing on them and she as a mother has experienced both happiness and sadness. Now it’s time to see how she manages her new litter. She was known as CHOTI TARA as she is the daughter of TARA now she has grown enough and most probably she is a granny by now! So in my mind she is no more a Little Star, in fact she is one of the important, brightest Stars in the map of Tadoba!

To follow the story of Choti Tara and see more pictures of her and the cubs, like her photo album The Bold & Beautiful Choti Tara on our facebook page.

Returning to the park after monsoons is very refreshing and this time particularly as we had very good rainfall in the region, the otherwise very arid park was looking absolutely brilliant with lush green landscapes! Throughout the monsoon Tadoba maintained its dramatic sightings. Maya topped the list with the many dominant male tigers invading into her territory and her many attempts of safeguarding her cubs showcased unique aspects of tiger behaviour. Will write about that separately……

Today’s blog is about wild dogs….On 1^st October 2016, the evening safari was over cast with rainy clouds, we hence, had a short safari but were still lucky to spend some time with a pair of Indian Wild Dogs (Dholes), one of the Big 5 animals to spot when in Tadoba.

Fifteen minutes into the reserve, at the location called the Jamni Chowk, as soon as we took the turn to go towards the waterhole Pandharpauni we saw a pair of wild dogs walking on the road in our direction. This seemed as a pair who have left their group and now were looking for settling down on their own. They were looking here and there and carried on making merry, hugging each other frequently. Observing them for some time, we moved ahead on the track to find butterflies on a fresh scat of the tiger (source of nutrition for them). As it started getting even darker as the cloud cover increased, we decided to slowly move back in the direction of the lodge. We heard a few alarm calls (warning calls that herbivores use to warn each other of presence of a predator nearby). When we reached back near the Jamni village, we saw the same dhole pair again, they had by this time grabbed a sambar baby and the mother sambar was trying to save the fawn from them. Eventually she had to give up and the two dholes started feasting on it.

While watching this vicious moment several thoughts occurred in my mind, foremost being, nature has its own survival rules and ethos, it is a chance opportunity to get to observe such incidents but best to keep the observation free from human emotions!

Coming back to the dholes, they are considered to be the one of most skilled hunters of the Indian Jungle. There was a time when even the tiger used to be scared of them owing to their large pack sizes in the range 30 to 50 per pack. There are in fact, old records that mention that a pack of dhole killed tigers. Over the years however, their number are diminishing. Mainly due to habitat loss and because of the human proximity they often get the canis distemper virus. Now they are hence, usually found only in smaller packs. Most of the pack has numbers like four to eight dholes. Only during the time the pack has got new pups the pack size goes upto 15-16.

As tigers instinctively kill dholes, the increase in tiger population in Tadoba perhaps has also been an additional reason contributing to the decline of Dhole population here. It is important to note here that tigers kill dholes not out of any “personal grudges” but because of their instincts (to protect their territory, cubs, kill (food) etc.).

For anyone on a safari, the finding of a “pugmark” is start of the adrenaline rush, as it indicates the possibility of the presence of the most anticipated animal in the Indian Jungle, the tiger! is it somewhere near?

Pugmarks are essentially impressions created on the soil by footsteps. Every animal, from lizard to human beings, can create these footsteps. In the jungle it is common to find pugmarks of tigers, leopards, sloth bears and wild dogs.

From ancient times, footsteps have always mattered! The difference is that in the earlier days, our ancestors as hunters used the footsteps aka pugmarks to track the animal movement. And today, researchers and tourists depend on the pugmarks to track movements using the same age-old principles.