Nearly a year after launching the Project Nilgiri Tahr for the conservation of its State animal, Tamil Nadu will celebrate the first ‘Nilgiri Tahr Day’ on October 7 (Saturday).
October 7 was chosen by the Government as Nilgiri Tahr Day in honour of E.R.C. Davidar, a wildlife conservationist who pioneered studies on the sole mountain ungulate of Southern India as early as in 1960s.
While launching Project Nilgiri Tahr, the Government had declared that Davidar’s birthday would be celebrated as Nilgiri Tahr Day. Davidar took the first census of the Nilgiri tahr in the Nilgiris landscape during 1963 and reported that there were about 400 tahrs in the Nilgiris including a largest herd consisting of 38 animals. He conducted a detailed survey of Nilgiri tahr throughout the Western Ghats in 1975 and estimated about 2,200 individuals. ‘Whispers from the wild’, ‘The Cheetal Walk-Living in the Wilderness’ and ‘The Toda and The Tahr’ are among his books on tahr conservation.
Members of the Project Nilgiri Tahr said that various activities would be conducted in the coming days to create awareness on the State animal, conservation status of which is in the ‘endangered’ category of the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.
The five-year tahr project, with a budget allocation of ₹ 25.14 crore, is headed by a Project Director and a research team comprising one senior scientist-cum-research coordinator and four senior research fellows. The project aims to conduct periodical synchronised surveys across tahr holding divisions, removal of invasive species and grassland restoration in tahr habitats, awareness programmes about Tahr conservation, implementation of ecotourism and ecodevelopment initiatives and health monitoring of the species.
COMMents
SHARE