TIGER OCCUPANCY IN RATAPANI-KHEONI LANDSCAPE : REASONS BEHIND TIGER PRESENCE IN PROXIMITY OF CAPITAL BHOPAL, MADHYA PRADESH

摘要

Bhopal is the capital city of Madhya Pradesh state, situated in fertile plain of Malwa plateau in vicinity of the Vindhyan ranges in central India. This area acknowledges the presence of historical tiger population. The present study deals with tigeroccupancy in Ratapani-Kheoni landscape (RKL) and the reasons behind the tiger presence in the vicinity of Bhopal. The RKL landscape is undulating, with hills, plateau, valley and planes, spread over the area of Bhopal, Raisen, Sehore, Obedullahganj and Dewas districts of Madhya Pradesh. Tiger occupancy survey was performed in RKL from December, 2018 to April, 2019 to estimate the overall occupancy rate V on presence software version 13.6. The total studied forest area was around 4620.84 sq. km of Vindhyan landscape. The occupancy survey across the study area was 5312 sq. km, segment distribution was 83 grid cells and each grid cell size was 64 sq. km. The tiger sign was detected and confirmed in 49 grid cells, which indicated naive occupancy of 0.59%.The tiger occupied estimated potential habitat was 70.83% of the total study area, or an area of 3762.48 ± 482.34 out of 5312 sq. km in RKL. In contrast, a naive estimate derived from the traditional 'presence-versus-absence' approach was only 3136.20 sq.km and underestimated true occupancy was 59.04%.Among tested 44 models, the best-fitted rpodel was Hines model under which phi (Cattle+Ruggedness), theta(.),theta'(.), p_t (Nilgai+Water) showed the lowest Akaike information criteria (AIC) value of 1144.59. The model-specific (3 (beta) coefficient estimate for covariates determining the tiger occupancy in RKL was tiger beta0(SE[/30])- 0.52(0.61). The rugged terrain, abundant perennial water availability and Nilgai/Cattle presence were influencing historical tiger population in proximity of Bhopal by occupancy modeling.