Fires
engulf Gir forest, Mudumalai
Amreli
(Gujarat)/Mudumalai: A fire engulfed the Gir forest
in Gujarat's Junagarh district on Wednesday. There have
been no reports of any animal casualty in the fire, which
spread across 70-80 acres of forest. The Gir National
Park is the world's only natural habitat for the rare
Asiatic lion. Conservationists say that keeping all the
big cats in Gir poses a serious risk as a single epidemic
or natural disaster can wipe out the entire population,
estimated at 359 in 2005.
Meanwhile,
another fire engulfed large tracts of forest area around
the Mudumalai Tiger Sanctuary in Tamil Nadu. The Tamil
Nadu Government declared Mudumalai a tiger reserve last
year as part of the Central Government's Project Tiger
initiative to boost the country's dwindling big cat population.
There were about 40,000 tigers in India a century ago.
The latest government census report says the tiger population
has fallen to 1,411, down from 3,642 in 2002, largely
due to dwindling habitat and poaching.
-Feb
19, 2009
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