In June 2005, a tigress died in a bloody fight with a gaur in the jungles of eastern Madhya Pradesh’s Kanha Tiger Reserve (KTR), leaving orphaned its three cubs - two female and a male, all less than a month old. Such cubs end up in captivity but destiny had something different in store for the triplets. The starving trio rescued by KTR staff was adopted by the then KTR field director Khageshwar Nayak in a small makeshift enclosure behind his residence, ‘Badrinath,’ Under the watchful eyes of forest guard Nandu Das Sarve, nicknamed ‘Jugad’ for his unique way of having reared such abandoned cubs in the past, the triplets were shifted from Badrinath to the Mukki Quarantine Centre of KTR a few months later, where the actual rearing started with least human imprint.
“They were first fed with ‘keema’ (minced meat), then wild hen and subsequently, goat meat. The cubs started killing goats but didn’t know how to feed on the kill. Gradually, they got trained as they grew into full-fledged adults at the quarantine centre,” recalls Rajnish Kumar Singh, DFO of Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve who served as a forest ranger in KTR in 2007-08.
Though tiger rewilding at KTR started in 2005, it was shifted to the specially designed large in-situ Ghorella Enclosure by February 2008.
The male was the first among the initial rewilded batch of three siblings to be shifted to a natural habitat Van Vihar National Park in Bhopal and went to be named ‘Kanha’ in the years to come. It’s the two females which went on to be part of history. Released in Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR) in 2011, they joined two females and a male tiger from Bandhavgarh and Pench TRs as part of the efforts to revive tiger population at PTR which had dwindled to zero due to rampant hunting in 2009. Once orphaned, the rewilded adult tigresses played a seminal role in reviving tiger population in the years to come at Panna which now has an estimated 90-plus tigers.
The second batch of orphaned cubs, a male and two females, was rescued from KTR’s Kisli Range in 2012 and successfully rewilded at Ghorella Enclosure.
However, the most compelling story of rewilding was to come. In 2016, two cubs born to tigress Baghinala, sibling of the iconic Collarwali, famous as India’s Super Mum tigress, were brought in. Baghinala and one of her three cubs died after consuming poisoned water in Pench. Of the two cubs brought to Ghorella, the male died six days later. The female survived. And how! The sole survivor of the third batch, she hunted on its own and turned into a confident female tigress. The MP forest department offered to send her to Odisha’s Satkosia Tiger Reserve which wanted tigers from MP for a tiger reintroduction project.
“I still remember one of the Satkosia officials refusing to accept the young tigress. They instead took two other tigers. But Odisha’s loss was actually MP’s gain as the same tigress was released in 2018 at Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary where last tiger presence was reported in 2010. Nauradehi, part of Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve of Bundelkhand region now, now has an estimated 30-plus tigers. It was the rewilded tigress, named Radha by MP minister Gopal Bhargava, which emerged as the matriarch, the Queen Mother to all the tiger cubs born at Nauradehi,” Singh said.
Since then, five more batches of orphaned cubs rescued from different tiger reserves and forests of MP have been successfully reared and rewilded between 2018 and 2026 at Ghorella. “Since early 2008 when the rewilding centre was established, as many as 15 tigers have successfully been rewilded and released into low tiger density areas of other tiger reserves in the state at the average age of 3-4 years,” KTR field director Ravindra Mani Tripathi said. The Ghorella Enclosure, presently, has its eighth batch of orphaned cubs brought here from Ratapani Tiger Reserve.
The centre comprises the quarantine house, a chain-link fenced 11 hectare in-situ Ghorella Enclosure for rearing tigers. It is surrounded by a 35 hectare area for herbivore populations which act as the prey base. A small quarantine supports orphaned tigers from the age of 3 months to 10-12 months before their release into the 11 hectare enclosure which remains their rearing-training-rewilding ground till they become around 3 years of age. Once they have perfected predation, the animals are released into a low tiger-density area of tiger reserves, including KTR and other reserves.
“Once the adults have succeeded in killing 100-150 chitals in their natural predation enclosure, they are released into the wild following due permission from the state’s wildlife wing. After release in the wild, the rewilded collared tigers are under 24x7 monitoring,” Tripathi added.
Officials associated with the project proudly claim that the experiences of the Ghorella Enclosure shaped the NTCA tiger rewilding protocols. It has also been the subject of research and model for other TRs of the country. “We recently had teams from Maharashtra, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh to study the rewilding process,” Mukki range officer Virendra Jamor informed.