Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu- The Hindu-30-08-2022

Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu- The Hindu-30-08-2022
GS-3
ENVIRONMENT
CONTEXT:
Forest personnel with an elephant calf rescued from a river after being washed away near Mavanallah, in the buffer zone of Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu.

Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu.
Mudumalai Tiger Reserve lies on the Northeastern and North Western slopes of Nilgiris, descending to the Mysore plateau, at the tri-junction of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The reserve has a rich floral and faunal diversity and is a good source area for tigers, co-predators and prey species. The terrain is undulating with the elevation ranging from 960m to 1266m.
Area of the tiger reserve
Core / critical tiger habitat: 321.00 km2
Buffer / peripheral area: 367.59 km2
Total: 688.59 km2
Habitat Attributes
Flora
The floral diversity of the habitat ranges from semi-evergreen, moist deciduous, dry deciduous to scrub forests. There are several wild relatives of cultivated plants, viz. wild rice, ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, solanum, guava, mango and pepper which serve as a gene pool for the cultivated varieties. The habitat also has swampy areas (Vayals) and grasslands.
Fauna
The faunal assemblage include: elephant, gaur, sambar, four homed antelope, spotted deer, barking deer, blackbuck, wild pig, mouse deer and predators like tiger, leopard and wild dog.
Status of the tiger
The reserve has a good tiger density. The 2010 country-level assessment has estimated a density of 11 tigers per 100 sq. km.
Buffer
The buffer comprises forests and human settlements with varied land use. The managerial agenda include ecodevelopment to provide ecologically sustainable livelihood options to local people to reduce their forest resource dependency, addressing human-wildlife conflicts, protection, monitoring of wild animals, ensuring retrofitting safeguards for wildlife in heavily used public infrastructure and fostering ecotourism.
Corridor
The reserve is connected to Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary of Kerala and Bandipur Tiger Reserve of Karnataka, besides having linkages through the forested slopes of Nilgiris to the Mukurthi National Park in the South, which is further connected to the Silent Valley in Kerala. Towards the East, the newly created Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve connects with the corridor formed by the Moyar River Valley thereby connecting the Mudumalai-Bandipur complex with the BRT Tiger Reserve and Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary of Karnataka.
Thus, the major corridors are
i) Moyar Valley - Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve – Biligiri Ranganatha Temple Tiger Reserve - Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary,
(ii) Mudumalai – Mukurthi National Park - Silent Valley National Park linkages.
Good practices in Field protection, intensive tiger monitoring using camera traps, capacity building of officers and staff and fire protection.