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Beyond the realms of Ranthambhore: Status report on tiger and its prey in the Western India Tiger Landscape

Beyond the realms of Ranthambhore’, a status report on tiger and its prey in the wildlife habitats of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, aims at enabling improved and precise conservation strategies. The Ranthambhore National Park, located in WWF-India’s Western India Tiger Landscape is the westernmost arid zone range for wild tigers in the world. Several human-dominated areas surrounding that National Park act as corridors for dispersing tigers and need to be secured to ensure the survival of the big cats in this region. This was the key observation revealed in a report ‘Beyond the realms of Ranthambhore’, released by WWF-India with support from the Government of Rajasthan in January 2016. The report is an outcome of two years of extensive field surveys and camera trapping exercises conducted by WWF-India in association with the Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh forest departments to understand tiger dispersal patterns and the presence of wild ungulates in the Western India Tiger Landscape. Based on the data and information collected during the course of this study, the report recommends strategic interventions with the stakeholders. It observes that in order to maintain a genetically-diverse population in this landscape, there is a critical need to allow safe dispersal of tigers by ensuring that corridors are functional.