Journal of Threatened Taxa |
www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 July 2021 | 13(8): 19149–19152
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893
(Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.7059.13.8.19149-19152
#7059 | Received 06 January 2021 | Final
received 15 March 2021 | Finally accepted 30 June 2021
First photographic record of
Mishmi Takin Budorcus taxicolor
taxicolor and Red Goral Nemorhaedus
baileyi from Kamlang
Tiger Reserve, Arunachal Pradesh, India
Cheshta Singh 1 & Deepti
Gupta 2
1 Divisional Forest Officer, Kamlang Tiger Reserve and Wildlife Sanctuary Division, Lohit, Arunachal Pradesh 792102, India.
2 Wildlife Institute of India, Chandrabani, Dehradun, Uttarakhand 248001, India.
1 singh.cheshta@gmail.com
(corresponding author), 2 rics.deepti@gmail.com
Editor: Anonymity requested. Date
of publication: 26 July 2021 (online & print)
Citation:
Singh, C. & D. Gupta (2021). First photographic record of Mishmi Takin Budorcus taxicolor taxicolor and Red Goral Nemorhaedus
baileyi from Kamlang
Tiger Reserve, Arunachal Pradesh, India Journal of Threatened Taxa 13(8): 19149–19152. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.7059.13.8.19149-19152
Copyright: © Singh & Gupta 2021. Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction,
and distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to
the author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: This work was funded by National Tiger Conservation Authority and Environment and
Forest Department, Arunachal Pradesh.
Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: The camera trapping exercise has been attempted for
the first time in this region. We thank National Tiger Conservation Authority
for funding support and Environment and Forest department of Arunachal Pradesh
for facilitating this work. We thank the range forest officer, Kamlang Tiger Reserve for encouraging the field staff. We
are grateful to the field staff mainly the Project Tiger protection squad for
their contribution in the field work despite facing a challenging terrain.
The landscape of northeastern India is a highly diverse and a species-rich
area. There are many species which are
not systematically surveyed in this region. This has led to a far lesser number
of records of species than what are actually present in this region. To
overcome this, it is essential to increase the intensity of surveys and their
scientific documentation. It will help in increasing the awareness of these
species which is essential for saving them from the threats of habitat
fragmentation, climatic changes, and risks faced through hunting cases. Over
the last two-and-a-half decades, advancements of various noninvasive
techniques such as camera trapping has strengthened the sampling procedure and
approach to reliable scientific data with reduction of time, efforts, and cost.
Camera traps have nowadays become very useful to study cryptic and elusive
species.
Kamlang Tiger Reserve (KTR) (Figure 1),
situated in southeastern part of Lohit
District, Arunachal Pradesh was declared a tiger reserve in 2017. It is
surrounded by the Kamlang Reserve Forest to the west
and north, un-classed state forest (USF) to the east and Namdapha
Tiger Reserve to the south. The total area of KTR is 783 km2, which
includes a core area of 696 km2 and a buffer area of 87 km2.
Many perennial rivers like Lang, Lathi, Kamlang, Sinabarai, Tawa, and Lai flow from the reserve. Glaw lake is a perennial lake at an altitude of 1,168 m.
The major indigenous communities inhabiting this region are the Digaru-Mishmi and Mizu-Mishmi.
The reserve has rugged terrain
with an altitudinal gradient of 500–4,500 m. KTR represents one of the
bio-diversity hotspots of India, Himalaya, which supports many elusive and
rarely sighted mammals, birds, and other taxa. This area lacks systematic
scientific surveys mainly due to extremely complex terrain and hence is very
less known for its biodiversity. Kaul & Haridasan
(1987) have classified forests of Arunachal Pradesh into six categories, viz.,
tropical, subtropical, temperate, alpine, subalpine, and secondary forest, out
of which KTR contains tropical wet evergreen forests, tropical semi-evergreen
forests, sub-tropical semi evergreen forests, moist bamboo forests, Himalayan
moist temperate forests, and moist alpine scrub forest.
A sign survey exercise was
carried out for the first time in a particular region of KTR, which falls in Anjaw District, along the northeastern
boundary of the reserve. Based on the inputs received from the local people and
the results of sign survey, this region seemed to be diversity rich. We
therefore carried out a camera trapping exercise for surveying this region.
Nine Cuddeback camera traps were deployed over a
period of 77 days (Total trap nights= 693), due to limitations of terrain
accessibility and suitability of season. We considered a single trap night to
be an occasion for example if an individual/group of animals was captured once
in 24 hours it was counted as an occasion. We used occasion as a unit to avoid
false count from the multiple capture of grazing herbivores. Our trap sites
fall in the moist alpine scrub forest type. No camera traps had been previously
deployed in this particular region. It was thus selected as a site for camera
trap deployment to capture and understand the species that could be found here.
We captured a lesser known
ungulate Red Goral Nemorhaedus baileyi (Bailey 1912) on two occasions in Anjaw District on a high-altitude ridge area (Image 2). On
an occasion, a female was captured with fawn which is a sign of breeding range
in the area. Red Goral has been categorized as a Vulnerable species in the IUCN
red list with less than 10,000 mature individuals left worldwide. The presence
of this species has been reported from Dibang, Changlang (Datta et al. 2008) and
Lohit valley (Nijhawan
2020) before but no photographic records have been reported from KTR so far.
The Red Goral remains poorly studied due to its narrow geographic range and low
population estimates (Singh 2002). This species prefers a forested habitat,
meadow, and scrublands with altitudinal range from 2,000 to 4,500 m. We
captured its presence at an elevation of 3,410 m. The forest type is mainly
sub-alpine in this area. This species continues to face threats due to habitat
fragmentation, illegal hunting, and infrastructure developments (Sung et al.
1997) and hence, needs immediate attention for conserving its range. As KTR is
being reported its breeding range, conservation practices should be focused in
this region.
We also captured another lesser
known species Mishmi Takin Budorcas taxicolor taxicolor (Image
1), which has been listed as vulnerable in IUCN Red List (Song et al. 2008). It is distributed at the northeastern
tip of India, however, precise geographic distribution in India is less known.
It has been sighted and photographed by Singh (2002) and genome was sequenced
using carcass tissue sample collected from Dibang
Valley by Kumar et al. (2019). We captured 165 photographs on 16 trap occasions
at an altitude of 3,470 m. Mishmi Takin was captured as solitary, as a group of
two individuals and a group of three individual including a calf. Though this
species is a group living animal, our solitary records may be because of camera
placements. We recorded species presence mostly from the Himalayan moist
temperate forest. Its population trend is decreasing mainly because of hunting
for bushmeat consumptions and habitat destructions (Wang et al. 2005) and
considered rare in this region. Our findings represent KTR as an important
breeding site for this species and demands more attention on this area for
conservation efforts.
Apart from this, we captured
Barking Deer Muntiacus muntjak,
Yellow-throated Marten Martes flavigula and Hoary-bellied Squirrel Callosciurus pygerythrus
from the camera traps deployed in this region of KTR (Table 1).
This document assembles a
baseline by presenting photographic information on the presence of rare and
elusive mammals present in the area. Eastern Himalaya are a great source of
biodiversity but are extremely sensitive to climatic changes (Chettri et al. 2009).
KTR is mostly inviolate due to inaccessibility and negligible biotic pressure.
This protected area together with Namdapha National
Park and Kamlang reserve forests forms a landscape
for the conservation of large cats like Bengal Tiger, Common & Clouded Leopards,
various mountain ungulates and other small mammals. Immediate conservation
steps must be taken with necessary supply of resources in order to protect such
remaining patches of habitats along with strict enforcement of ban on hunting.
Population monitoring studies that provide strong scientific basis should be
encouraged for effective conservation strategies.
Table 1. Details of camera
trapping in reference to the species captured during sampling.
|
Species |
Number of occasions on which
species was captured |
Total number of captures |
Altitude (m) |
1 |
Red Goral |
2 |
8 |
3410 |
2 |
Mishmi Takins |
16 |
165 |
3470 |
3 |
Barking Deer |
1 |
1 |
3215 |
4 |
Yellow-throated Marten |
7 |
8 |
3432 |
5 |
Hoary-bellied Squirrel |
3 |
7 |
3248 |
For
figure & images - - click here
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