T.N. Forest Dept. temporarily suspends radio-collaring of Nilgiri tahr

The Tamil Nadu Forest Department has temporarily suspended the initiative to radio-collar individual Nilgiri tahr in the State as part of Project Nilgiri Tahr.

The Tamil Nadu Forest Department has temporarily suspended the initiative to radio-collar individual Nilgiri tahr in the State as part of Project Nilgiri Tahr.

The exercise, being conducted to study habitat usage, movement, and other behavioural aspects of the Nilgiri tahr — Tamil Nadu’s State animal — was being initially undertaken in the metapopulations of the species in Anaimalai Tiger Reserve (ATR) and Mukurthi National Park (MNP).

Plans were to first radio-collar 12 individuals in ATR and MNP, with three successfully being collared so far.

M.G. Ganesan, Project Director of Project Nilgiri Tahr, told The Hindu that four animals had been successfully sedated — three to be fitted with radio-collars and one to be treated for an illness — but added that the fifth individual died suddenly during the radio-collaring process in MNP on Saturday (December 7, 2024).

“We had adopted the same protocols which were applied to the four previous operations, all conducted successfully.”

“The morphological traits of the animal suggested that it was healthy, and a good candidate to be radio-collared. However, only during the postmortem did we discover that its organs, including kidneys, liver, and heart were not in a good state, which, combined with the stress of the operation, could have led to its death,” said Mr. Ganesan, adding that further analysis of the animal’s visceral organs will help the department in understanding the exact cause of death.

He added that the death had prompted the Forest Department to temporarily stop the radio-collaring exercise and to examine the possibility of formulating new Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for the capture of Nilgiri tahr.