The last of Kashmir’s royal stags

On 16 March, Wildlife Institute of India scientist Parag Nigam tranquilized and radio-collared a hangul in the Dachigam National Park on the outskirts of Srinagar.

The enigmatic Kashmir stag has never been radio-collared before, and its nervous disposition doesn’t make it the ideal subject for tranquilization. Indeed, a plan to collar three more stags has been deferred to November, with the animals moving to the upper reaches of the park with the onset of summer. The Hindu reported on 14 April on the radio collaring of the hangul and how it was achieved.

In early March, this writer was in Dachigam to try and catch a glimpse of the last remaining hangul, the state animal of Jammu and Kashmir. The government claims there are 218 of them, but the number has hovered in the 200s since 2004 and wildlife experts insist the real number is likely to be in the double digits.

“There is no certainty, only adventure,” says Nazir Malik, a 50-year-old naturalist, quoting Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli, when asked about the chances of seeing the hangul. Adventure it definitely is, with bear and leopard scats marking the narrow mountain track that climbs the pine forest.

Malik is a self-taught naturalist who ran away from school to roam the forest that he has known since he was five years old. Dachigam is definitely roam-worthy. It covers an area of 141 sq. km and is located in the foothills of the Zabarwan range in the greater Himalayas. And it is also the last bastion of the hangul, a subspecies of the European red deer native to India. Dachigam means 10 villages, which were relocated at the time of the formation of the park. The park area is divided into upper and lower Dachigam by a 15km corridor of temperate forest.