West Bengal: Camera traps big cat in Lalgarh forest

JHARGRAM/KOLKATA: A camera trap installed in Lalgarh forest a few days ago caught a royal presence in the once-Red zone early on Friday: a full-grown male Bengal tiger, the first-ever sighting of the big cat in this area. The event, believe experts, marks one of the longest tiger migrations in India — a distance of more than 250km.
Researchers from Kolkata had installed the cameras a few days ago after reports of attacks on villagers’ livestock — including seven full-grown cows and a calf — and news of pugmarks started to pour in from the forest and fringe villages like Amlia, Pardiha and Madhupur, sparking rumours of a tiger and causing panic. TOI had reported this in Thursday’s edition.

While foresters are trying to find out the tiger’s origin, their best guess is that it has come from Odisha’s Simlipal National Park, the nearest tiger habitat, more than 250km away. If so, it would be one of the longest tiger migrations in India till date.

In 2008, a radio-collared tigress from Madhya Pradesh’s Kanha had travelled almost 250km in four months to reach Maharashtra’s Pench Tiger Reserve.

Experts said territorial animals like the tiger can cover such distances primarily to find mates and prey. Some feel the Lalgarh tiger could also have come from Jharkhand’s Palamu via Daltanganj, Latehar, the Ayodhya hills and Dalma.

In that case, the distance travelled would be even longer — more than 400km.

“We are sending a trap cage and a team of tranquillization experts from the Sunderbans,” said chief wildlife warden Ravi Kant Sinha. “Since the animal has already killed seven cows in more than three weeks, we have planned to shift the big cat to Jharkhali (where there’s a tiger rehabilitation centre) for the time being. The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in New Delhi will be alerted about the next course of action,” he said.

Sinha said they would also coordinate with officials of the Wildlife Institute of India(WII) to match the tiger’s stripe patterns with those available in their database to find out where the animal has come from.

Source : https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/camera-shoots-big-cat-in-lalgarh-forest/articleshow/63141515.cms