After 4year wait, Mukundara Hills to get 3 tigers
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has given the go-ahead for relocating three tigers, one male and two females, from Ranthambhore National Park to the Mukundara Hills tiger reserve.
“The NTCA technical committee has cleared the relocation of three tigers, one male and two female, to Mukundara Hills from Ranthambore, in a meeting held in New Delhi on Friday. The relocation, which was earlier scheduled for December 2018, has been advanced by a year,” a senior forest department official told HT.
Mukundara Hills tiger reserve, located in the Hadoti region of south-eastern Rajasthan, has been waiting for the big cats it has been named after, ever since its inception in 2013. Mukundara Hills is the third notified tiger habitat in Rajasthan after Ranthambhore in Sawai Madhopur and Sariska in Alwar. The reserve was formed to cater to the spillover tiger population from Ranthambore, which at present is reported to have around 65 tigers. The state government had recently sought the Centre’s nod for shifting the animals.
The state’s chief wildlife warden G V Reddy, while refusing to confirm or deny the move, said, “I will wait for the minutes of the meeting (held on Friday) to be made available before making any statement.”
Sources said the state forest minister Gajendra Singh met Union environment and forest minister Harsh Vardhan in New Delhi last week, on which occasion the issue of shifting the tigers also came up for discussion.
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