Hyderabad,  The Telangana Forest Department has identified 14 tigers in Amrabad Tiger Reserve (ATR).

This was revealed in the annual wildlife census report of the ATR released by the department on Friday.

The ATR is home to highest population of tigers in Telangana. During the 2019 Phase 4 census, the department could capture only 12 identified tigers.

During the 2020-21 Phase 4 monitoring conducted in parts of the core area of the tiger reserve, the department could capture 14 identified individual tigers. The same was compared with the existing tiger database.

Phase 4 monitoring is being conducted for monitoring the tigers in every tiger reserve in India, whereas estimation of prey population density (spotted deer, sambar, nilgai, wild pigs, four horned antelope and chinkara etc) is done by Line Transect Estimation method.

This Phase 4 monitoring and estimation will give an idea to the protected area managers, how the prey-predator densities are there in the Protected Area (PA), which areas in PA are more with prey densities, which are the areas where tiger movements are more, and which areas are disturbed and requires management intervention etc.

In the Line Transect exercise, the population density of ungulates is estimated and the spotted deer along with wild pig occupied the first place with 2.40 individuals/square km, followed by Sambar with 1.65 individuals/square km and Nilagai with 1.41 individuals/square km, followed by Common Langur with 1.37 individuals/square km.

This year, the water hole census was also conducted in ATR. The results show that early morning hours and evening hours were preferred timings by ungulates for visiting water holes to drink water. A total of 43 wild animal species were recorded.

The annual census report was formally released by Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, R. Sobha, in the presence of senior officers like PCCF (SF), R.M Dobrial, PCCF (Campa), Lokesh Jaiswal, PCCF (Admin & Vigilance) Swargam Srinivas, Addl PCCF (Production), Siddananad Kukeratty, and others.