ONGOLE: The Forest department officials took a decision to shift the three tiger cubs to the Nallamala- Nagarjuna Sagar- Srisailam Tiger Reserve (NSTR) forest area to help them grow as adults. The group of four female tiger cubs aged about 3 months were abandoned by their mother in the Atmakur forest area eight months ago. Forest officials rescued them after villagers spotted them. The cubs were later shifted to the Sri Venkateswara Zoological park in Tirupati for better nourishment.
While one of them died due to ill health, the SV Zoo authorities named the other three cubs as Harini, Anantha and Rudramma. After having fed the cubs just like infants, the forest conservation authorities have decided to send them back to their natural habitat in order to let them grow as wild tigresses.
Recently, AP Forest higher officials AK Nayak, Santhipriya Pande and Rahul Pande along with their teams inspected various deep forest locations in the Nallamala-NSTR area and found a suitable dense area near the China Manthanala forest.
It is learnt that the officials are going to establish special tiger cub enclosures, where the cubs will learn wild hunting methods. Each one of them should complete a minimum of 50 wild hunts and then only they will be freed from the enclosures in the NSTR region.
“The tiger cubs are now just like our infants and they haven’t learnt their basic hunting skills as they were grown in captivity,” one of the Nallamala forest conservation officers explained to TNIE on Monday.
“To grow them as adult tigers, we have to shift them to the forest and release them into the wild to help them gather their natural hunting skills through re-wilding methods. Each one of them should complete a minimum of 50 wild animal hunts, and then only we will consider them as adult wild tigers. Following which, we will release them into the NSTR zone,” he added.