Raising questions about rising instances of man-animal conflicts in saturated landscapes, a ‘problem’ tiger, which was caught after a conflict situation in Chandrapur, died at the state government’s Gorewada rescue centre in Nagpur.
KT-1, a sub-adult tiger from the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR), was captured on June 10, after being blamed for five human deaths at Kolara and shifted to the rescue centre the next day.
It was quarantined at an enclosure, showed poor appetite and failed to adjust to its captive conditions. The tiger showed signs of distress on Monday morning, and died soon after. A post-mortem identified the prima-facie cause of death as septicaemia, but a laboratory report is awaited. “The tiger was in the wild and was captured later. This happened in a short window period. Hence, it is difficult to pinpoint when he was infected. However, the lab report may help arrive at a conclusive reason,” an official explained.
On Sunday, a tigress was tranquilised and captured after she strayed into a house at Brahmani village in Chandrapur. “The tigress was weak with blunt canines and anaemia, and was hungry. She has been taken to the Gorewada rescue centre,” the official added.
This points to another problem—the rising number of tigers in Chandrapur, which is Maharashtra’s tiger capital, and the resultant man-animal conflict. The 2018 tiger census had estimated Maharashtra’s tiger numbers at 312 out of India’s 2,967. Of this, Chandrapur’s count was around 160, including the TATR and 40 tigers in Bramhapuri, which is not a protected area.
Today, Chandrapur has an estimated 200 adult tigers, including 63 breeding females and sub-adults, who will soon begin to mark their territory and disperse.
This has led the Forest Department to make a controversial suggestion to the state government to translocate 50 tigers to areas with adequate prey bases. In the first such move in India, a suggestion has also been made to sterilise 20 male tigers to prevent them from breeding further.
However, department sources note that the focus must be on strengthening tiger dispersal corridors to allow India’s national animal to move freely to other landscapes and settle there. These corridors have been jeopardised by linear projects like roads and proposals for new coal mines.
On Monday, Maharashtra Environment Minister Aaditya Thackeray wrote to Union Environment, Forests and Climate Change Minister Prakash Javadekar against the proposed auction of a mine site near the TATR, which would affect the corridors. Aaditya said that the auction had been scrapped in 1999 and around 2011 after evaluation.
