MOTHER’S CARE, SILENTLY WATCHED (by trap-camera) in the Pench Tiger Reserve
*Dr. Aniruddha Majumder **Jagdish Chandra
Since, tiger (Panther tigris tigris); one of the most charismatic species on the earth, always draws attention for its majestic behavior. When it walks in the jungle, everything becomes alive, as if “Maharaja is walking”. When it roars, the other life forms start shivering. In the last few decades, population of this elusive and beautiful species is under threat mainly because of poaching, habitat degradation, and lack of prey base. It is therefore, challenging for foresters/managers to conserve this species in human dominated landscape of India.
The great philosopher from India Sree Rajneesh said “The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new”. In the world the bond between mother and its offspring is unique and unparallel. God could not come to earth to feed and take care of every child. So, he sent ‘Mother’ in place of him. A woman is incomplete if she is not blessed with the nature’s privilege of becoming a mother and nurturing the god’s gift with pure and unconditional love, care and affection. In nature, we also observe mother’s care her baby to save from all natural hazards and help him/her to grow up. My story is based on this extraordinary relation on the earth that is the bond between a mother spotted deer and her fawn. It was silently captured by remotely triggered camera or camera trap while the baby was suckling its mother’s milk during February 2013. The trap camera were deployed in the dense forest to record unique activities of illusive and nocturnal wild animals. With the first animal triggered photograph being taken in 1877, remote photography has been used to study avian nest predation, feeding ecology, nesting behavior, determining activity patterns, presence – absence monitoring and estimating population parameters.
The increasing popularity of remote photography in wildlife research has led to the development of a large variety of equipment and methods. Therefore camera trap methods using remotely triggered cameras found to be more applicable for elusive species like tiger and leopard. From the times of famous British forester Frederick Walter Champion photographing cryptic animals such as the tiger in the Indian subcontinent using remote photographic techniques has sought popularity. His master creation “With a camera in Tiger-Land” considered being pioneer work on camera trap in India. The remotely triggered infra red digital camera that I used (Model Number Reconyx HC 600) was set in multi shot mode so it can easily record series of photographs of any event. The place Pench Tiger Reserve of Madhya Pradesh of Central India is famous for Rudiyard Kipling’s legendary creation “The Jungle Book”. How a village kid fondly called “Mowgli” was raised by wolf pack in wild is still myth in this area and has been attracting national and international tourist every year. This nature reserve is also therefore called “Mowgli’s Land”. In any tropical forest of South-East Asia, spotted deer or chital (Axis axis) considered being the cutest wild animal by nature lover and undoubtedly they are the eye catcher in any open grassland. Chital has restless nature, vigilance behavior and alerts its rest of the team members if predator is around. They are largely preyed by large carnivores such as tiger, lion, leopard and dholes in Indian forest. Their young one is also predated by jackals and wolves. A baby chital or fawn is always safeguards by its mother from all predators. Baby used to follow the tail movement of its mother and always roam around while mother is grazing. The innocent chital baby feels safe in the forest with its mother as we all feel with our mother too. A chital fawn suckling her mother’s milk might have often catches our eyes in a jungle, but how a remotely sensed camera silently (watched) captured this phenomenal activity in wild, might be some sort of interest to the reader.
Author is
* Then Research associate (WL).
in SFRI, Jabalpur.
** Then Dy. Dirctor Pench Tiger Reverse