Darjeeling : A much smaller forest patch in Darjeeling is in the news this time after the camera traps laid there captured four images of a never-before-seen deer.
And this could well be a first-time sighting in India, a reason enough for conservationists to cheer.
Foresters going through the images taken at the Senchal Wildlife Sanctuary, spread over an area of only 38 sq kms, to ascertain the population status of Asiatic black bear stumbled upon four images of a herbivore that looked like a barking deer but is completely black in colour. Nothing of the sort was seen in the forests of North Bengal before.
Though the species is yet to be identified properly, foresters believe it's a melanistic barking deer, a rare find in the animal kingdom.
"The deer, with pelage colour bordering on dark black, was caught four times in our camera traps laid in the sanctuary during the exercise between October 2010 and 2012. Though there were unconfirmed reports on presence of melanistic barking deer in Darjeeling, this is perhaps the first photographic documentation of the animal in the wild," said Sanjeeb Pradhan of WWF-India's Khangchendzonga programme.
"I have never heard about the sighting of any melanistic barking deer in India before," said K Shankar, a research coordinator in Wildlife Institute of India ( WII) and a member of IUCN's deer specialist group. Chief wildlife warden N C Bahuguna said melanistic barking deer is a common barking deer with the recessive gene deciding the high amount of pigment colouration.
Though wildlife enthusiasts believe it can also be a black barking deer, a separate species, foresters are not in a hurry. "We have sent a note to Threatened Taxa, the international journal on conservation and taxonomy. Once they accept it, we can send the images to experts across India for identification," added Pradhan. Experts said if it turned out to be a black barking deer, then it will be its second sighting in India after Arunachal Pradesh's Namdapha tiger reserve.
Aparajita Datta, a wildlife biologist with Nature Conservation Foundation who led the study in Namdapha, said their samples were very close to a black barking deer, also known as Muntiacus Crinifrons. "Based on greater geographical proximity of Namdapha to Yunnan and morphological appearance, they could also be the Gongshan Muntjac (Muntiacus gongshanensis), another species of barking deer described from north-west Yunnan," she said. The specimens from Namdapha did not have the orange tuft on forehead which is typical of black barking deer.
Joint director of science and conservation at Wildlife Conservation Society, India, N Samba Kumar said black barking deer is only found in eastern China. "And they can be identified through their typical characteristic features. They have light orange markings on top of its head and white marking underneath the tail," he added.
"It was spotted only in the Simkona forest block of Senchal, indicating a scattered presence. We sighted it with our naked eyes during the exercise also," Pradhan added.
And this could well be a first-time sighting in India, a reason enough for conservationists to cheer.
Though the species is yet to be identified properly, foresters believe it's a melanistic barking deer, a rare find in the animal kingdom.
"The deer, with pelage colour bordering on dark black, was caught four times in our camera traps laid in the sanctuary during the exercise between October 2010 and 2012. Though there were unconfirmed reports on presence of melanistic barking deer in Darjeeling, this is perhaps the first photographic documentation of the animal in the wild," said Sanjeeb Pradhan of WWF-India's Khangchendzonga programme.
"I have never heard about the sighting of any melanistic barking deer in India before," said K Shankar, a research coordinator in Wildlife Institute of India ( WII) and a member of IUCN's deer specialist group. Chief wildlife warden N C Bahuguna said melanistic barking deer is a common barking deer with the recessive gene deciding the high amount of pigment colouration.
Though wildlife enthusiasts believe it can also be a black barking deer, a separate species, foresters are not in a hurry. "We have sent a note to Threatened Taxa, the international journal on conservation and taxonomy. Once they accept it, we can send the images to experts across India for identification," added Pradhan. Experts said if it turned out to be a black barking deer, then it will be its second sighting in India after Arunachal Pradesh's Namdapha tiger reserve.
Aparajita Datta, a wildlife biologist with Nature Conservation Foundation who led the study in Namdapha, said their samples were very close to a black barking deer, also known as Muntiacus Crinifrons. "Based on greater geographical proximity of Namdapha to Yunnan and morphological appearance, they could also be the Gongshan Muntjac (Muntiacus gongshanensis), another species of barking deer described from north-west Yunnan," she said. The specimens from Namdapha did not have the orange tuft on forehead which is typical of black barking deer.
Joint director of science and conservation at Wildlife Conservation Society, India, N Samba Kumar said black barking deer is only found in eastern China. "And they can be identified through their typical characteristic features. They have light orange markings on top of its head and white marking underneath the tail," he added.
"It was spotted only in the Simkona forest block of Senchal, indicating a scattered presence. We sighted it with our naked eyes during the exercise also," Pradhan added.
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