"Ksamaya dharitri", exhorts a line from a Sanskrit Shloka, demanding the Man learn the patience and the forgiveness of the Earth. The forbearance of the earth is nowhere beter seen than in the support she gives to wild life threatened by man's irreverent disregard for the gifts of nature. His wanton and thoughtless destruction of wild life habitant is endangering many spices. The Department of Posts fels privileged to draw the attention of the masses to the urgent need for conservation. This year the DEpartment is issuing a set of two stamps on one rare and one endangered member of the cat family both of whom are predators at the apex of their respective ecological chains.

The SNOW LEOPARD, related to the common panther (Fells Pardus) is the predator supreme of the high mountains. Endowed with an exceptionally rich for coat to withstand the extreme cold of the uplands it inhabits, it has a remarkably bushy tail to prvent heat-loss and large pads to help it traverse snow. Its colour varies from crea to greyish white with large rosettes giving it a mottled apearance that assists its camouflage. Though it is found throughout the Himalayan range above tree-line where sufficient prey is available, its main population in India is in the trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh, Lahul and Spiti where bharal or blue sheep and ibex are found. It also preys upon Himalayan tahr, musk deer, marmots and heers and occasionally upon livestock.

The snow leopard is at the apex of the food chain in the mountains and to safeguard it, protection has to be accorded to its prey species and the habitant of both the prey and the predator. With this objective in view, Government of India has initiated a Snow Leopard Conservation Scheme under which suitable hbitats of the snow leopard and its prey are to be protected and restored. Though the tiger (Felis Tigris) had a distribution from the Usssuri forests of the USSR to INdonesia and from Caucasus to the Chinese coast, there has been little evidence of the existense of WHITE TIGERS reported outside India. Even in this country, it has been a rarity. Its main area of occurance has been in the sal forests of north eatstern Madhya Pradesh and Southern Bihar. The White Tiger has a pure white or an off-white coat with little brown stripes, often fewer than in a normal coloured tiger. The nose and the pads are light coloured and the eyes are light blue. The present history of the white tiger in captivity starts withthe capture of a white cub by the Maharaja of Rewa in Sidhi district, Madhya Pradesh, in 1951.

Named Mohan after the forests where he lived, the cub was maintained at Govindgarh Fort near Rewa. With selective breeding he became the progenitor of all the captive white tigers for the next three decades in India and abroad. In 1981, five white tigers were born to a pair of normal coloured tigers at the Nandankanan Biological Park in Bhubaneshwar (Orissa), to introduce a second strain of white tigers in captivity. There are at present 36 white tigers in 7 Zoological parks in the country.

Source : Information Folder issued by Indian Posts & Telegraph Department, Government of India