MOTHER’S CARE, SILENTLY WATCHED (by trap-camera) in the Pench Tiger Reserve

*Dr. Aniruddha Majumder **Jagdish Chandra

Since, tiger (Panther tigris tigris); one of the most charismatic species on the earth, always draws attention for its majestic behavior. When it walks in the jungle, everything becomes alive, as if “Maharaja is walking”. When it roars, the other life forms start shivering. In the last few decades, population of this elusive and beautiful species is under threat mainly because of poaching, habitat degradation, and lack of prey base. It is therefore, challenging for foresters/managers to conserve this species in human dominated landscape of India.

The great philosopher from India Sree Rajneesh said “The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new”. In the world the bond between mother and its offspring is unique and unparallel. God could not come to earth to feed and take care of every child. So, he sent ‘Mother’ in place of him. A woman is incomplete if she is not blessed with the nature’s privilege of becoming a mother and nurturing the god’s gift with pure and unconditional love, care and affection. In nature, we also observe mother’s care her baby to save from all natural hazards and help him/her to grow up. My story is based on this extraordinary relation on the earth that is the bond between a mother spotted deer and her fawn. It was silently captured by remotely triggered camera or camera trap while the baby was suckling its mother’s milk during February 2013. The trap camera were deployed in the dense forest to record unique activities of illusive and nocturnal wild animals. With the first animal triggered photograph being taken in 1877, remote photography has been used to study avian nest predation, feeding ecology, nesting behavior, determining activity patterns, presence – absence monitoring and estimating population parameters.

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