BHOPAL: Declared India’s ‘Tiger State’ with 526 tigers following the All India Tiger Estimation Report 2018 released on Monday, Madhya Pradesh has lost three tigers, including two cubs and a tigress, in the last three days.
Just a few hours before the Tiger Estimation Report 2018 was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, a tigress and one of her cubs were found dead in the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve on Sunday evening.
Only two days later, another tiger cub aged between 15 and 18 months was found dead in Ghunghuti forest range in Umaria district on Tuesday evening.With no external injury being detected on the cub’s carcass during the autopsy on Wednesday, it seems snakebite in the dense forests during heavy rain could have possibly caused the death.
On Sunday evening, the carcasses of a seven-year-old tigress and 10-month old cub were found by forest department staff inside the Bandhavgarh tiger reserve in Umaria district, around 500 km from the city of Bhopal. Primary probe by forest department officers suggest that a male tiger could have killed the tigress and cub. However, the forest department staff is clueless about which male tiger killed them.
Another male cub of the dead tigress was found alive on Tuesday night in same area. The cub was captured and tranqualised and has now been shifted to a safe enclosure.On July 29, Madhya Pradesh reclaimed the prestigious tag of being country’s Tiger State with an estimated 526 tiger count, that was just two more than Karnataka, to which the central Indian state had lost its tiger state status in 2010.
Over 100 tigers dead
As per figures of National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), Madhya Pradesh has lost 141 tigers since 2012. MP forest minister Umang Singhar informed that the state lost 23 tigers between October 2018 and June 2019.