Unsustainable wildlife tourism adds stress for tigers: CCMB

Tigers in two major tiger reserves in Madhya Pradesh suffer from tourism induced stress, according to a study by city-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB). The study, published in 'Conservation Physiology', said unsustainable wildlife tourism causes distinct physiological stress in tigers in protected areas.

It said a team of researchers, led by G Umapathy, found chronically elevated levels of fecal glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM) a marker of stress, in individual tigers in Bandhavgarh and Kanha Tiger Reserves in Madhya Pradesh. Such high fGCM levels can negatively impact growth, reproductive success, immunity and cause muscular atrophy, it said.

A total of 341 fecal samples collected from the reserves during the tourism and non-tourism periods and data on various disturbances, including tourism activities like the number of vehicles and visitors, showed significantly higher fGCM concentrations in tigers during the tourism period. CCMB said India harbors 60 percent of the current global free-roaming tiger population.

But these tigers face several threats like poaching, habitat loss and fragmentation. The felines have lost more than 95 percent of its global historical home range and its extant population exists in fragmented habitats, it said. CCMB said previous studies by the same group showed that recently introduced tigers in Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan failed to reproduce effectively, presumably due to high-stress levels.

The study recommended a strict regulation of vehicular traffic, the number of tourist vehicles, shifting of artificial waterholes away from tourist roads and reducing other anthropogenic disturbances, including the relocation of villages from the core area of tiger reserves, the release added.