In a global first, orphan tigress adopts the wild

Indian tigers are biggest attraction but two tigresses have made the country proud by showing amazing grit in coping with the pressures of being in the wild.

Updated on: Apr 4, 2011, 02:29:26 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Indian tigers are biggest attraction but two tigresses have made the country proud by showing amazing grit in coping with the pressures of being in the wild.

An orphan tigress in Madhya Pradesh (MP) has successfully adopted the wild habitat, unlike her male companions, a global first. The second was the 15-year-old tigress in Rajasthan, who had earned the tag of being the oldest breeding big cat in the world.

The MP forest department relocated a five year-old tigress from Kanha, where she was in an enclosure with her two brothers since 2006 after death of their mother, to Central Indian tiger reserve, Panna, about 200 kms away.

“When we spotted the three cubs we thought whether they would be able to return back into the wild or not,” said MP’s Chief Wildlife Warden B S Pabla.

South India leads in tiger census

Karnataka with 300 tigers is the new tiger state of India.

It pushed Madhya Pradesh to second position, whose tiger population fell from 300 to 257.

The most impressive increase in tiger population was in Uttarakhand, where their numbers rose from 178 to 227.

There was good increase in numbers in Maharashtra with 169 tigers from 103 in 2006 census and in with 143 tigers from 73.

The thought laid the foundation of a unique experiment. An enclosed wildlife area was set up for the cubs to grow in a forest habitat under supervision of experienced foresters. About three years ago they were allowed to hunt the prey released in the enclosure like other tigers. “The tigress did well but the tigers didn’t,” Pabla said.

The male tigers were sent to Bhopal zoo and the tigress returned to freedom in Panna forests, better known for its diamonds. A week in the wild has been tough for her but she is doing well. “She has started hunting like any other tiger born and brought up in the wild,” said forest department official.

The other tigress about 500 kms in west in Ranthambore in Rajasthan is in the global reckoning for altogether different reason. Being the oldest breeding tigress in the world and still occupying the core area of ’s oldest tiger reserves among the notified 39 big cat homes.

"It is unusual that a tigress of her age is still breeding and is hale and hearty," said R N Mehrotra, Rajasthan’s Chief Wildlife Warden. A tigress normally breeds till an age of 12 or13.

The tigress had seen a lot in Ranthambore where in the last 15 years the tiger population has dwindled to less than a dozen from 35. As per the latest estimation, there number is close to 30. “Her story is also that of the Indian tigers,” said Qamar Qureshi, a Wildlife Institute of India’s scientist, after releasing the new estimation of 1,706 tigers in India.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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