Odisha’s Nandankanan Zoo have decided to let captive-bred tigers free in wild
The authorities of Odisha’s Nandankanan zoo have informed that they have prepared a roadmap to rewild the captive-born tigers in order to increase their reproductivity in the state’s forest. The Zoo has taken a step to free all the captive-bred tigers in the wild again hoping that their numbers in the state forest will increase as a result. Rewilding is a conservation strategy which is used to promote biodiversity by reintroducing plant and animal species in an area which have been decreased mainly because of humans.
Nandankanan Zoo Director Manoj V Nair, on the occasion of, International Tiger Day said that the captive-bred tiger cubs will be released into the wild giving them a chance to be a part of the wild and as a process of rewilding. He informed that this might take. A year as a scientific process needs to be followed. The Odisha Zoo has currently 26 tigers including 16 normal-coloured Royal Bengal Tigers and seven white RBTs and three melanistic tigers.
Director Nair said the Nandankanan Zoo in association with the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) Bengaluru, has planned to start research on the genetic characteristics of the zoo’s tigers. The Zoo also has a wild tiger named after the zoo, ‘Nandan’. He informed that efforts will be made to pass the breed’s characteristics to the next generation so that newborns can have wild character and can cope in the wild easily. The tigers will be released in tiger deficient areas of Odisha and Nair said, “We hope that the research findings will be available within a year. Thereafter we will have a report on good breeding for the rewilding process”. The Odisha Zoo is the first in the country to take this step.
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