SRINAGAR, INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR – The last of the Hangul Deer live on the 86,000 acres of Dachigam National Park in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir.
Also known as the Kashmiri Stag, the Hangul is famous for its red coat and five-pronged antlers. Native to India, its population has dwindled in recent decades due to shrinking forests, increased tourism, the contamination of high-altitude water sources and climate change.
In 1947, the Hangul population was more than 2,000. Today, the Wildlife Institute of India describes the population as critically endangered, indicating that there are less than 250 deer remaining. Although there are more than 150 species of deer recognized globally, the Hangul is the only surviving race of the Red Deer family of Europe in the sub-continent.
“The number of Hangul declined to as low as 150 by 1970. However, the state of Jammu and Kashmir, along [with the] World Wildlife Fund prepared ‘Project Hangul’ for the protection of these animals that brought better results and population showed an increase,” says Khursheed Ahmad, a Wildlife Management faculty member for the Veterinary Sciences and Animal Husbandry program at Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology in Kashmir.
What remains problematic for the Hangul, Ahmad says, is the small population of adult males, which numbered less than 20 in 2003. A census conducted in March 2008 revealed the existence of between 117 and 199 animals of both sexes. Today, the number is approximately 230 and experts say there has been an upswing in both the male to female and female to fawn ratios, indicating a more balanced population. There has not been a more recent estimate for the number of adult males.
Despite population gains, experts warn that the Hangul is not safe yet.
“The current population trends indicate that [the] species could go extinct if necessary and serious interventions aren’t made [immediately],” says Ahmad, who added that many young are still failing to survive, in part, because of continued predation by leopards and black bears that are also indigenous to the area.
“There is an urgent need for a Hangul recovery plan to be developed,” Ahmad says. He believes that the plan must include field surveys that identify corridors to help dispersion and reintroduction of Hangul to their former range as well as habitat protection outside Dachigam National Park. His team hopes to create a captive breeding plan for the Hangul in the coming year.
Wildlife Department Embraces Technology
To put the plan into action the Jammu and Kashmir Wildlife Department is switching from traditional monitoring techniques to the use of the satellite collars in hopes of gaining more knowledge about the patterns of the Hangul. In its first test phase, the department put satellite collars on three black bears — a male, a female and a cub — to study their behavior. The collared bears are currently under observation at Dachigam.
Although there are benefits from the satellite collar technology, some say proper protocols have not been created and one staff member alleges that the use of satellite collars could have been employed to monitor the Hangul as early as 2003.
“We procured two satellite GPS collars as a donation from [the] Guinness Charitable Trust in 2003,” says one staff member on the condition of anonymity. “Four more collars were procured by the state wildlife protection department through [the] Wildlife Institute of India. By using the technique of GPS satellite collaring we would have known and identified movement patterns of Hangul in Kashmir and identified critical areas for its conservation in its entire range area in Kashmir,” he says.
The staff member added that if the collars had been put on Hangul at that time, the Hangul would have been the first animal in India to have been studied through satellite collaring.
But despite this criticism, the wildlife department says they chose to study black bears with the new satellite technology first because of a rise in human to animal conflict in the area. Once testing on the black bears has been completed, the collars will be used to monitor the declining population of Hangul. Ahmad says the satellite collars will be fitted on the endangered deer as soon as possible.
