Amid a controversy over a report claiming 25 tigers in Rajasthan’s Ranthambore National Park have gone “missing”, officials on Thursday said 10 of those big cats have already been traced.
The official’s reaction came after Rajasthan’s Chief Wildlife Warden Pavan Kumar Upadhyay on Monday said 25 of the 75 tigers in the wildlife reserve, which is located about 130 km from the state capital Jaipur, had gone missing over the last year.
This was reportedly the first time such a high number of tigers has been officially reported missing in a year. Earlier, 13 tigers were reported missing from Ranthambore between 2019 and 2022.
“Ten tigers have already been traced within 24 hours of this report,” a park official said.
“After the prolonged monsoon this year, the Forest Department started camera trap again recently and the tigers have been recorded,” he added.
A three-member committee to investigate the disappearances has been formed to review monitoring records and recommend action if any lapses by park officials were found. The focus was on finding tigers that had not been seen since May this year.
The committee has been asked to submit its report within two months.
A list of 25 missing tigers, accessed by NDTV, shows that four of them are aged above 17. It is pertinent to note that tigers in the wild don’t usually live beyond 14-15 years of age and it’s assumed that some of these large cats may have died.
Conservation biologist Dharmendra Khandal, whose NGO Tiger Watch is active in the area, expressed surprise at the report.
Park officials have said that Ranthambore faces challenges due to tigers’ overcrowding, which leads to fights over territory. According to the 2022 census data, the park has a tiger population estimated at 88.
The park’s area of about 1,400 square kilometres is struggling to support them as not all of it is prime habitat.
For years conservationists have also stressed the importance of creating safe forest corridors so the tigers of Ranthambore can safely disperse to other forests.
There have also been instances of villagers poisoning tigers in the past.
Recently, a tiger was stoned and axed to death, allegedly by villagers who were angry over a goatherd being killed in a tiger attack.
