India gets its 56th tiger reserve in Chhattisgarh

New Delhi: The Centre on Monday notified the Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve, Chhattisgarh, as the 56th Tiger Reserve of the country.

Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav informed this, saying, “India continues to work towards a green future where humans and animals cohabit in harmony.”

With this notification, Chhattisgarh is now home to four Tiger Reserves, which will strengthen the species’ conservation with ongoing technical and financial assistance from the National Tiger Conservation Authority under Project Tiger.

The tiger reserve, encompassing a total area of 2829.38 sq. km, includes a core and critical tiger habitat of 2049.2 sq. km, comprising the Guru Ghasidas National Park and Tamor Pingla Wildlife Sanctuary, and has a buffer of 780.15 sq. km.

This makes it the third largest tiger reserve in the country after Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve in Andhra Pradesh and Manas Tiger Reserve in Assam.

“Keeping in view the landscape approach to conservation as envisaged in India’s National Wildlife Plan, the newly notified tiger reserve is contiguous with the Sanjay Dubri Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh forming a landscape complex of nearly 4500 sq. km” the Ministry said in a statement.

Further, the tiger reserve is connected to the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh to the West and Palamau Tiger Reserve in Jharkhand to the East.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority had accorded final approval for notifying the Guru Ghasidas- Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve in October 2021.

A total of 753 species, including 365 invertebrates and 388 vertebrates, have been documented from Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve by the Zoological Survey of India.

The invertebrate fauna is represented mostly by the class insecta. The vertebrate fauna includes 230 species of birds and 55 species of mammals comprising several threatened species from both the groups.