News Excerpt:

With a resolve to remove the Nilgiri Tahr (Nilgiritragus hylocrius) from the endangered status, the Tamil Nadu government will execute a synchronised survey of the State animal.

More details about the news:

• The three-day exercise is being done to estimate the population of the Tahrs.
• India has taken support of the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature and the Wildlife Institute of India for population estimation. The third is IUCN, whose country director will be an observer in the exercise.
• While the bounded-count method will be used in all the areas, the double observer method is adopted additionally in large contiguous landscape having a major population in two areas like Grass Hills National Park and Mukurthi National Park and one block in Silent Valley National Park and two blocks in Eravikulam National Park.

Nilgiri Tahr:

• The Nilgiri tahr is the only mountain ungulate in southern India amongst the 12 species present in India. It is also the state animal of Tamil Nadu.
• The Nilgiri tahr, which used to be found along the entire stretch of Western Ghats, is presently found only in small fragmented pockets. A large part of its population has been wiped out from its historical range. The existing populations are under severe stress due to habitat loss and hunting.
• This endemic species of the Western Ghats is listed as Endangered in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and is protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act of India, 1972.
• As per the last assessment done in 2015 by WWF-India, there are 3,122 Nilgiri Tahr in the wild in Tamil Nadu and neighboring landscapes of Kerala, and a sizable portion is concentrated in the Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR).
• In 2020, the Nature Conservation Foundation found around 510 individuals in the ATR, which houses the second largest population of the species after the Eravikulam National Park in Kerala. 
•  The Tamil Nadu government has launched the Nilgiri Tahr conservation project to protect the state animal. The project aims to develop a better understanding of the Tahr.