THE sub-adult problem tiger that killed around six persons in territorial forest of Deolapar and Paoni Forest Ranges remains elusive even after four months since launch of the search operation in the area. The Forest Department team is making all efforts to capture the elusive tiger for last four months but remains unsuccessful, so far. Foresters have installed cages, laid camera traps, deployed teams and taken other necessary measures to trap the problem tiger. In last four months, the big cat hunted around 35 baits. “As per the SOP of National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), we can tranquillise big cats till 6 pm. We are placing baits to capture the tiger accordingly, but the elusive tiger is hunting the baits during night time mainly between 9 pm and midnight,” Dr Bharat Singh Hada, Deputy Conservator of Forest, Nagpur, told The Hitavada.

 

“This big cat is completely dependent on the baits now. Earlier, it was hunting cattle. If we stop placing baits, the tiger is likely to move towards forest fringes to hunt cattle. Therefore, we are planning to capture the tiger and release it in tiger reserves where population of such big cats is thin,” said Dr Hada. “There are many tigers residing in the territorial forests of Parseoni, Deolapar, Umred Karhandla forest areas.They can be called territorial tigers as we are noticing these looking for new habit and are dependent on preying cattle leading to mananimal conflict,” added the DCF. The sub-adult tiger which is still elusive and yet to be identified while the Forest Departments of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh have no details about this problem tiger.

 

“We are continuously monitoring movement of this tiger which was first settled in Deolapar range then shifted to Madhya Pradesh side and now venturing in Paoni range in Maharashtra side,” said the senior Forest Officer. The cases of man-animal conflict have increased drastically in Pench Tiger Reserve (PTR) and territorial forest of Nagpur district in last one year. In such encounters many human deaths took place and most of the cases happened in territorial forests. Keeping the increasing encounters in mind, the forest department has increased tiger monitoring in territorial forest area. For this operation, the Forest Department has already spent around Rs 10 lakh but still the tiger is out of their reach. For this operation, teams from Bhandara, Chandrapur and Transit Treatment Centre (TTC) were involved and more than 50 forestmen from Nagpur are also working day an night to capture this elusive tiger