Efforts on to make Buxa Tiger Reserve a plastic-free zone

Kolkata: The state Forest department is striving to make Buxa Tiger Reserve (BTR) in Alipurduar district of North Bengal a plastic-free zone. The tourists visiting the BTR are being offered paper bags free of cost and in case they are carrying plastic, the things in it are being put inside those paper bags.

"We are taking all possible measures to make BTR plastic free. It is a massive challenge for us as the area in and around the reserve is a populated one. A number of slums are also located inside the forest area itself. We have started offering paper bags to tourists at the ticket counter of BTR," state Forest minister Binay Krishna Barman said. The state Forest department will be soon introducing a dozen of Royal Bengal Tigers in BTR in a bid to augment tiger population there. The tigers will be brought from the forest reserves in Assam, which have a similar flora and fauna as the Buxa forest.

The state has already written to the Assam government for procuring a dozen tigers. It has been learnt that Buxa is one of the three forests in India where the National Tiger Conservation Authority has approved the tiger augmentation programme. It is located close to Assam's Manas Tiger Reserve and some experts believe that animals from Manas often come to Buxa using Bhutan as a corridor.

The BTR is home to smaller cats such as leopards which occasionally surface in the tea gardens nearby. There are also common clouded leopards, jungle cats and fishing cats. The herbivore list includes elephants, Indian gaur, chital, sambars, barking deer and hog deer. The tiger reserve has an area of about 757.9 sq km, of which 390 sq km lies in the core area and 367 sq km in the buffer zone.

The Forest department has decided to bring sambar and bison to the Buxa Tiger Reserve from other wildlife sanctuaries to boost the food chain ahead of the introduction of big cats in the BTR.

"A number of heribivore needs to be present in Buxa for the food of the tigers. So, 250 spotted deer have already been moved to Buxa. We have decided to bring in at least 50 sambars and a good number of bisons from Jaldapara National Park to the BTR," a senior Forest department official said.

The number of tigers in Buxa has been often debated by wildlife enthusiasts. While Forest Department officials claimed there were tigers in the reserve, almost no sighting of the big cats raised questions about their presence. The survey of tigers in 2011 based on DNA analyses put the number of tigers at 20.