The Similipal Tiger Reserve has 16 tigers, 10 of which have melanism...
Digital Desk: The government alerted Parliament on Thursday that there are ten "black tigers" in India, all of which are situated in Odisha's Similipal.
Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Union Minister of State for Environment, told the Rajya Sabha that "melanistic tigers" had only been reported in Odisha's Similipal Tiger Reserve.
The Similipal Tiger Reserve has 16 tigers, 10 of which have melanism, according to the 2022 cycle of the pan-India tiger estimating study, he added.
Because of its genetic composition, the Similipal Tiger Reserve has been classified as a separate conservation cluster, according to the minister.
In 2021, ecologist Uma Ramakrishnan and her student Vinay Sagar from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore, discovered that the dark coat colouration and patterning caused by a single mutation in the Transmembrane Aminopeptidase Q (Taqpep) gene.
Their study, which was published in the September 2021 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, found that the tigers in the Similipal Tiger Reserve are a solitary population in eastern India, with little to no gene flow from other tiger populations.
Under the government-supported scheme of Integrated Development of Animal Habitats (CSS-IDWH), the Similipal Tiger Reserve has received a total of 32.75 crore in funding over the previous five years for animal conservation, habitat management, human resource development, and infrastructure development.
According to the researchers, such isolated and inbred populations are very vulnerable to extinction, even over short periods, which has serious consequences for tiger conservation efforts.
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