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Forest department hunts for tiger that killed 19-year-old in Mysuru
The official said the department has set up 70 camera traps but the movement of the tiger is yet to be captured.
The hunt for a tiger in the Nagarhole National Park range has been intensified near Mysuru after it killed a 19-year-old youngster from a tribal community, Karnataka forest department officials said on Tuesday.
At least 50 personnel have been trying to track the movements of the tiger, aged 3-4 years, which killed the youngster from the Jenu Kuruba community, a forest dweller tribe, on September 8 in Hunsur in Mysuru district, about 125 kms from Bengaluru, the officials said.
“We are just trying to collect the signs and data from the ground and three are no signs on the tiger which was involved in the conflict. We are getting signs and data about other tigers,” D Mahesh Kumar, deputy conservator of forests and director, Karnataka forest department, told Hindustan Times.
The official said the department has set up 70 camera traps but the movement of the tiger is yet to be captured.
Mahesh Kumar said, “The department is also using thermal drones to capture the movement of this tiger. It has so far has been able to take pictures of other animals but not of the particular one that is responsible for the death of the teenager.”
The death of the youngster comes at a time when there has been an increase in human-animal conflicts in Karnataka and other states, which, according to experts, happen as animals are pushed out of their territory or due to encroachments for farming and other purposes.
There have been 320 human deaths in tiger attacks in reserves between 2014 and 2020 across all states, according to a response by the ministry of environment, forest and climate change and National Tiger Conservation Authority on September 3 to an RTI application filed by Kerala-based activist, RK Govindan Nampoothiry.
Between 2014 and 2020, a total of ₹1,505.53 lakh was paid as compensation across all states where such attacks were reported, according to the response to Nampoothiry. This includes ₹998.20 lakh compensation in Maharashtra, ₹169 lakh in Uttar Pradesh, ₹128.53 lakh in Madhya Pradesh and ₹50 lakh in Karnataka.
There have been at least 434 cases of tigers attacking cattle and humans in Karnataka in 2020-21, registering a 37% increase in such encounters from 316 in 2019-20, according to data from the state forest department, Hindustan Times reported in March. This includes at least nine deaths of humans in these two years and around 10-12 cases of injuries while a majority of them are of cattle being attacked or killed, according to the department.
A tiger was found dead in Karnataka’s coffee-growing district of Kodagu after it had killed four humans, critically injuring at least one person and was responsible for the deaths of at least 25 cattle this March.
On February 21, the forest department had captured a tigress lurking in the locality and the one on the prowl currently is believed to be a male.
In a 2018 report from the Centre, titled ‘Status of tigers, co-predators & prey in India’, it was shown that only 1,923 of these big cats live within the reserves while around 35% of them are outside the protected forests.
With an estimated 524 tigers in last official count, Karnataka is home to the second largest population of the big cats spread over forest ranges like Bandipur, Nagarhole, Biligiri Ranganatha Swamy Temple (BRT) and Bhadra, among other reserves.
A growing number of wild animals, such as tigers, leopards and elephants, stray into areas of human settlements, agricultural lands and plantations in search of food outside the forests.
Forest department data shows that there have been 17,561 human-animal conflicts in Karnataka in 2020-21 as against 16,314 in 2019-20.
