Tiger translocation plan shelved for now

BHUBANESWAR: India’s first project involving inter-state translocation of tigers seems to have ended in a failure with the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) deciding to recall a 40-month-old tigress from Odisha’s Satkosia Tiger Reserve to Madhya Pradesh’s Kanha Tiger Reserve, according to a communication from the authority to the Odisha government.

The NTCA also said that the Odisha forest and wildlife department has made mess out of the monitoring and management of the relocated tigress.

In a letter to Odisha chief secretary A K Tripathy, NTCA deputy inspector general Surender Mehra said tigress Sundari, relocated from the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh under the project of “augmentation and recovery of tiger population in the Satkosia Tiger Reserve” of Angul district, was not monitored and managed according to the standard operating procedure set by the NTCA.

In June 2018, a tiger couple from Madhya were relocated to Satkosia to repopulate the reserve’s dwindling big cat population.

Mahabir, the male tiger, allegedly died due to poaching. Sundari, the tigress, is kept in an enclosure in the tiger reserve after it killed a 45-year-old woman and a 65-year-old man living inside the reserve and tried to attack a TV reporter in September last year. The alleged assault triggered violence by locals who burned the forest department’s boats and beat house.

“The tigress cannot be allowed to be kept in a small enclosure any longer and in the interest of tiger conservation, the tiger will have to be brought to the Kanha Tiger Reserve with immediate effect. The tiger translocation programme at the Satkosia Tiger Reserve shall be suspended till the ground situation improves,” the NTCA said in a letter. Messages to the state government about the two translocated tigers were not taken seriously.

Odisha chief willdife warden HS Upadhyay said he did not see the withdrawal of Sundari as a setback to the exercise.