U’khand loses third big cat in 3 months, national toll at 30
2yearold female tiger found dead in Pipalpadao
DEHRADUN: Uttarakhand reported third tiger death in its Terai Central forest division on March 28. A two-year-old female tiger was found dead in Pipalpadao area of the division.
With this, the country reported 30 tiger deaths this year – at an average of 10 every month.
Forest officials said patrolling staff reported the carcass lying in a pond following which its postmortem was done.
Preliminary investigation found that the animal had stomach infection due to which it wasn’t able to eat anything.
“The death is natural and we have disposed the carcass as per National Tiger Conservation Authority protocols,” said CS Sanwal, DFO Haldwani who has additional charge of Terai Central forest division.
Prior to this incident, a tiger was found dead in Ramnagar forest division on January 29.
The first tiger death of the year, however, was reported from Corbett Tiger Reserve on January 11. The half eaten corpse of a twoyear-old tiger was found in Kalagarh division of the reserve. Officers said the animal died due to infighting. At present, the exercise of All India Tiger Estimation is underway in various states. In this accord, Phase I is in process in Haldwani division while the process in Corbett will start later.
India has so far reported 30 big cat mortalities, officers working with TRAFFIC India said.
The official website of Tigernet is currently being reconstructed and therefore, the database cannot be accessed. The division launched the website Tigernet few years ago to report tiger mortalities which was easily accessed by common people. But, those close to the matter shared that Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra top in reporting tiger deaths.
Saket Badola, who is heading Traffic India programme of WWF, “MP and Mahrashtra top the list in reporting maximum mortalities. The website is under reconstruction but we are compiling the data offline as well.”