While the country’s longest national highway, the NH-7, which passes through the Pench Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra, is often news of the death of wild animals, animals have now found new paths to avoid vehicles.
More than 5,450 wild animals, including 11 tigers, have been captured in the chamber using six underground road crossings, the first dedicated structures for crossing animals in the country, between March and December 2019, according to a report from the Institute of Life Wild of India (WII), Dehradun. According to the findings, the tiger, the spotted deer, the wild boar, the hare and the jungle cat are among the first species that are captured under the structures and captured regularly.
Tiger scientist Bilal Habib, who suggested mitigation measures, said: “The monitoring exercise has shown that these crossing structures are contributing to improving the permeability of the landscape. Such mitigation measures, if adopted, would help defragment the landscapes. fragmented. ”
The report, based on data from trap camera surveys from March to December 2019, states that 18 species of wild animals were found, excluding the rhesus macaque and gray langur, using these underpasses. According to the WII report, in addition to tigers and leopards, the most frequent users of these underpasses were spotted deer, wild boars and wild dogs. The other animals included jungle cat, mongoose, common palm civet, small Indian civet, Indian hare, rusty spotted cat and porcupine.
“As of December 31, 89 tiger crossings have been recorded under the mitigation structures. These crosses correspond to 11 individual tigers, who are also regular users of the underpasses, ”says the report. Along a 16.1 km length of the NH-7 that passes through forests adjacent to the Pench Tiger Reserve and intersecting the Pench-Navegaon-Nagzira Tiger Corridor, nine wildlife mitigation structures were constructed according to what was proposed in the WII-NTCA joint report in May 2015. “The results of the monitoring of mitigation measures in the NH-7 are very promising. We have reported 5,381 catches of 18 wild animal species from these underpasses, of the which was discovered that the jungle cat, the hare, the chital, the wild pig, the wild dog and the tiger use these structures more frequently, ”said tiger scientist Bilal Habib.
