A five-year-old male tiger, translocated from Ranthambore to Sariska in June 2008, on Monday was found dead within the Sariska Tiger Sanctuary by a team of Rajasthan forest officials on the trail of another four-year-old tiger "missing" since Friday.
The ambitious project to revive Sariska's tiger population, which lost all its tigers by 2005, began in June 2008 when a tiger was translocated from Ranthambore National Park (RNP) to Sariska in a helicopter. Since then, five tigers have been translocated from RNP to Sariska.
Rajasthan Chief Wildlife Warden and Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) R N Mehrotra maintained it was too early to determine how the tiger, ST-1, died. "After preliminary investigations, we believe this may have been the result of a territorial fight, but we will know for certain only after the post-mortem," he said, adding that the loss of a tiger in Sariska was a setback to the project.
Chief Conservator of Forests, Wildlife, P S Somashekhar said prima facie, there was no evidence pointing towards poaching or poisoning. "The body was found in an advanced state of decomposition, but medical officials have begun ascertaining the cause of the death," he said, adding that the tiger had been dead for at least three to four days before being found.
The news of the death sent officials from Rajasthan and the National Tiger Conservation Authority rushing to the spot. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, who was addressing a public rally in the region, also visited Sariska in the evening. Though he did not go to the spot where the tiger was found dead, he held a meeting with senior forest officials as well as Rajasthan forest secretary V S Singh. Minister of State for Forests and Environment Ram Lal Jat was also present.
"It is a very unfortunate incident in Sariska, but efforts are on to determine the exact cause of the death. The Forest Department is also working hard to try and track down the tiger that has not been sighted for three days," said Jat.
The translocation project, which involved shifting adult tigers from RNP to Sariska began in June 2008 when a male tiger was shifted using an IAF helicopter. Since then, the Forest Department has shifted four more tigers to Sariska — two males and three females in all. However, in 2009, following reports that the first male and two tigresses shifted to Sariska were unable to mate, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests stalled the translocation process to initiate genetic testing of the tigers to ensure mating.
Senior forest officials stated that another tiger and tigress were shifted to Sariska from RNP in 2010 following intense genetic testing and over-population in RNP. "The actual plan was to shift five tigers to Sariska from RNP, but the project was stopped in 2009 because of reports of genetic problems," said a senior official, adding that overpopulation in RNP was another reason why two tigers were shifted to Sariska in 2010. Since 2009 there have been stray incidents of big cats straying away from the RNP region after overcrowding.
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