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Plan to catch Mudhumalai tiger alive even as it evades traps
The tiger has not been declared as a man-eater but as “problematic” and as an animal that has “become very dangerous to human life in the area”
A day after orders were issued to hunt a “problematic tiger”, forest officials on Saturday began operations to track and capture the big cat identified as MDT-23 or Mudumalai Division Tiger-23 in Tamil Nadu’s Nilgiris district.
Unconfirmed reports say that the male tiger said to be over 12-years-of age has killed four people in a week while forest officials confirm two such human deaths. Since the region has three more tigers, the forest team has identified eccentric stripes on the tiger for identification.
Some of the forest department staffers were perched on treetops for at least six hours. “We put up a bait under the tree to lure the tiger towards us to tranquilize him but it was sighted only once in the morning and now he is inside the forest patch in Masinagudi,” said an officer of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, not wishing to be named. “Except for his age, nothing will slow his movement and IQ down. The tiger is moving nicely and smartly so that he’s not sighted.” The search operations were suspended at 6 pm at the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, home to 103 tigers.
“More than 75 of us are on the ground. The aim is to capture the tiger alive without harming him by using tranquilizer darts,” said another forest official. There are elaborate measures on the ground to capture the tiger. Five cages have been placed in vital locations. Special teams including forest veterinarians have been formed under the supervision of the conservator of forests and the field director of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. “Highly trained forest personnel including officers from Kerala’s forest division in Wayanad district have been brought in,” said the officer. Drones and sniffer dogs are also part of the search operations.
The tiger has not been declared as a man-eater but as “problematic” and as an animal that has “become very dangerous to human life in the area”. These declarations require field evidence according to the standard operating procedures for dealing with emergency arising due to straying of tigers in human dominated landscapes laid out by the National Tiger Conservation Authority in January 2013.
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Tamil Nadu chief wildlife warden Shekar Kumar Niraj issued an order on Friday to hunt the tiger under Section 11 (1) (a) of Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. The tiger is present in the human habitation of Gudalur and has been preying on livestock too since July 2021. Since then, various teams have tried to capture the tiger but haven’t succeeded and the tiger has been elusive. “The presence of thick tea bushes, inclement weather, challenging terrain and disturbances by the local public had rendered the capture operation very difficult,” Niraj said.
Forest officials said that people in the area have been protesting demanding either the capture or killing of the tiger. On Friday, as per the reports from conservator of forests and field director, Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, it was confirmed that the tiger killed one person in the Masinagudi area.
