According to the findings of a research done by the Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), unsustainable wildlife tourism causes a differrent sort of physiological stress in tigers which probably affecting their reproductions.
Tigers in the reserve forests of Bandhavgarh, Kanha and Sariska are under tremendous stress induced by tourism and this may have a negative impact on their breeding games.
The research was done by comparing concentrations of fecal glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM) — a stress marker — in individual tigers, that is taken during tourist and off-peak seasons.
The results, were published in ‘Conservation Physiology’, read as, “During the 8-9 month of peak tourism period the stress levels of tigers were very, very high. At the time of our year-long study, we took fecal samples of the same tigers from the same location and the results, we found, were disturbing. Although females are known to undergo more stress, our study shows that males were also under tremendous stress. We could also distinctly correlate the stress levels depending on the number of vehicles entering the tiger reserves.”
Conservation Physiology’ is a creation of Principal Scientist Dr G Umapathy’s group at CCMB’s Laboratory for Conservation of Endangered Species.
The scientists collected a total of 341 fecal samples from Bandhavgarh and Kanha reserves of Madhya pradesh and their study was based the relationship between anthropogenic disturbances and physiological stress levels in tiger populations in protected areas. Though their findings recorded various anthropogenic disturbances, tourism activities are of prime importance among them.
Further the report says that, “One of our previous studies from the same group has shown that recently introduced tigers in Sariska Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan, failed to reproduce effectively and the reason presumably – high levels of stress caused by high anthropogenic disturbance.”
If we go by the records of last 100 years, tiger populations have declined dramatically, from 100,000 to as few as 3,200. Being a large predator, tigers play a vital role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Protecting a tiger means protecting around 25,000 acres of forest—forests that sustain wildlife, local communities and supply people around the world with clean air, water, food, and products. So, the study recommends a strict regulation of vehicular traffic, number of tourist vehicle, shifting of artificial waterholes away from tourist roads and reducing other anthropogenic disturbances, including the relocation of villages from the core area of tiger reserves.
