21-day chase ends as tigress Zeenat finally tranquilised in West Bengal's Bankura
BHUBANESWAR/ BARIPADA: After spending sleepless nights for three weeks, wildlife officials finally managed to tranquilise tigress Zeenat in the Bankura area of West Bengal on Monday.
“The three-year-old tigress was sedated and caged near Gopalpur village of Bankura district at around 4 pm. It is now being transported to the Alipore Zoological Garden in Kolkata for health examination. From there it will be brought back to the Similipal tiger reserve,” said PCCF Wildlife and Chief Wildlife Warden, Odisha Prem Kumar Jha.
The PCCF wildlife said capturing Zeenat was a challenging task as it was avoiding human contact. However, the female tiger’s movement in an open area close to Gopalpur, where it was hiding near a bush, made its tranquilisation a little easier.
A team of forest officials from West Bengal and Odisha and experts from Sundarbans carried out the operation.
“In the absence of a machan, the tranquilisation team carried out the darting operation with the help of a JCB,” he said.
The tigress brought to Similipal Tiger Reserve (STR) from Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) as part of a tiger supplementation programme kept wildlife officials of three states - Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal on tenterhooks for 21 days following its exit from the Similipal landscape on December 9.
After moving out from STR, the female cat was first traced to a forest in the Chakulia range of the Jamshedpur forest division in Jharkhand. A 15-member team from Odisha was soon dispatched to the neighbouring state to bring the dispersing tigress back to the STR. However, the illusive cat changed its location further on December 20, entering the forests of Belpahari within the Jhargram forest division in West Bengal.
In search of a suitable habitat to establish its territory, the three-year-old tigress later entered into Mayurjharna elephant reserve and Raika hill in Purulia before being tranquilised in Bankura.
About 130 forest personnel including a tiger squad from Mayurbhanj and an expert team from Sundarbans had joined the search operation for the tigress that managed to escape the surveillance on multiple occasions. Cameras, drones and radio collar devices were also being used by the forest officials to track its movement in West Bengal.
STR field director Prakash Chand Gogineni who was present at the site during Zeenat’s tranquilisation said plastic nets had also been put up within a few kilometre radius of Bankura forest to prevent Zeenat from moving to other locations.
Gogineni said a number of forest staff from West Bengal had also been engaged for crowd management and sensitising people of villages located in the fringes of Bankura forest to protect them from the tigress.
Meanwhile, the PCCF Wildlife said this time the tigress is likely to be kept in an enclosure and released into the core area of Similipal south division, where Jamuna, the first tigress brought from the Tadoba landscape had been relocated. “However, a final decision in this regard will be taken after the big cat is brought to the STR,” he said.