Tibetan antelope, popularly known as Chiru, blue sheep, wild Yak and many other rare and threatened species in the high-altitude Himalayan region have greater hope of survival with wildlife experts and armed forces joining hands for their conservation.
A research project has been initiated by Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in collaboration with forest department of Jammu and Kashmir, ITBP and Army in Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary’s Changchenmo valley in Ladakh to identify threats and management issues for the survival of these animals.
The idea is also to study the habitat characteristics and seasonal movement patterns of these ungulates which are on the verge of extinction due to massive destruction of their habitat and hunting by poachers.
For instance, wild Yak presently exists only in the Changchenmo valley in Ladakh in the entire Himalayas and are rarely sighted says K Sankar, senior scientist at the Dehradun-based WII who along with his colleague GS Rawat has undertaken the four-year-study.
In other areas in Himalayas, the bulky animals who weigh about 1,000 kgs and have long black hair with curved horns on their head are domesticated and their breed is not pure.
“The wild gene of yak is thus very important for future genetic studies for diseases resistance etc. The study aims to evolve a long-term population and habitat monitoring protocol for Yak as other fauna in the region,” says Sankar.
Since army and paramilitary forces personnel are always on patrol in inaccessible mountain terrain where temperature plummets to as low as minus 40C during winter, they can do the job better then any wildlife expert, explains Sankar.