The peaks of the Western Ghats, the abode of grasslands, plunging valleys, and precipices, hold many mysteries. Among them being the Nilgiri tahr, about which little is known of. This mountain goat is Tamil Nadu’s State animal, and is now having its moment in the sun thanks to Chief Minister MK Stalin’s announcement to observe October 7 as Nilgiri tahr day every year to honour hunter-turned-conservationist ERC Davidar, and the subsequent launch of Project Nilgiri tahr on October 12. The project, for which the Government has allotted ₹25 crores, is expected to answer “lots of unanswered questions” about the animal, according to N Mohanraj, an advisor with WWF-India.
Mohanraj spent several days trekking up the precarious slopes around 2011 for a survey of the tahr for WWF-India. “We simply recorded the number of animals we saw,” he says, adding that they documented more than 3,000. To this day, their numbers have not increased dramatically. “We do not know why they did not spread,” he says, “Whereas elephants, tigers, spotted deer, and sambar, have sprung back in numbers.” Being mountain goats, he wonders why they have not bred as much.
