June 22, 2020

Sahyadri Tiger Reserve - An Unknown Forest (Part 1)


     Sahyadri Tiger reserve is the most recent Tiger reserve of Maharashtra notified in year 2008. This tiger reserve is the only tiger reserve in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra.


     This forest is formed of various sanctuaries which were exisiting long before. To give additional protection to Tiger, these areas were notified as Tiger Reserve. This Reserve when formed included

> Koyna Wildlife Sanctuary
> Chandoli Wildlife Sacntuary


and now it is extended upto
> Radhanagarti (Dajipur) wlidlife Sanctuary

     The Tiger reserve has core area of 600 sq.km. and buffer area of 565 sq.km including total 1165 sq km. making it one of the top 10 of Project tiger by sheer size. This tiger reserve spreads for about 100km from North to south but overall width of this forest varies from region to region. This makes it a very unique type of reserve.

     The buffer zone of this forest start south of Pratapgad fort near Mahabaleshwar which coverts to core zone near Vasota Fort. The core zone runs south till Koyna Dam wall and then after small buffer area another core zone starts around Bhairavgad near an abandoned village called Patharpunj which runs till Chandoli village. another long stretch of buffer zone till Gaganbawda fort/ghat and then kicks in the parts of Radhanagri Sanctuary which runs till fonda ghat.

     As per 2009-10 Tiger population estimation excercise it is estimated that there are about 7 tigers in the Project. But it is also thought that this prediction could be erronious as this terrain is highly remote, mountainous to get true population. Also the new protection might have kicked in little bit of population boost. Ofcourse this area is more Leopard friedly than to tigers and hence very healthy population of leopards.

     As all of you have noticed that this Tiger reserve though notified recently holds and old forest and is dotted with lots of Forts and subsequently lot of heritage and stories, I will be covering entire forest part by part. So keep reading !!!

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