Valmiki Tiger Reserve

Patna, Jan. 8: The tiger that had strayed out of Valmiki Tiger Reserve has virtually gone missing almost one-and-a-half month after it was last sighted in Saran district, about 260km south of its original habitat.

Neither the locals nor the field officials of the forest department have found any sign of presence of the tiger in the area where it was moving in the past fortnight. The signs of the tiger’s presence were last reported on December 23 in the Jalalpur area of Vaishali district.

The big cat was first sighted on December 2 when villagers spotted it sitting in a dense bush on the banks of the Gandak river at Sarwar Magarpar village in Saran district. Saran divisional forest officer K. Ganesh Kumar was injured when the animal attacked him while he was trying to dart the feline the same day. Since then, the animal had been moving in the riverine area of Gandak spread over Saran and Vaishali districts.

“Pugmarks, scat and remains of the killings made by the tiger are the three indirect signs on the basis of which we were tracking the movement of the strayed tiger. But not a single such sign has been found in the entire area during the past fortnight,” a forest department official, who is part of the team deputed for tracking the big cat, told The Telegraph.

He said as most of long grasses in the area too had been cleared, chances of the strayed tiger hiding somewhere in the area were negligible. “As chances of the tiger’s presence in the area are almost nil, the services of tiger trackers, too, have been withdrawn from the area and Wildlife Trust of India darting expert Prashant Deshmukh has returned,” the official added.

While tiger trackers from VTR were deputed in the area on December 4, the darting expert was camping with the field team since December 7.

Confirming the development, chief wildlife warden D.K. Shukla said, “As the tiger appears to have left the area, we have now set up a strong information gathering network so that the department could act quickly in case any information about its presence in the area come to us.”

Apart from field officials, the forest department has put the local police stations on alert and phone numbers of local forest officials have been given to villager so that they could pass on any information related to the tiger.

Shukla said that there were strong chances of the tiger having returned to its original habitat.

Commenting on the latest developments, Wildlife Trust of India manager and tiger expert Samir Kumar Sinha said a thorough search operation should be carried out in the area before jumping to any conclusion.

The forest department, too, is working on similar lines. “Once we get the three trained elephants from Assam, those would be put in service in the area for carrying out the search operation. The search teams would move up to VTR along the Gandak to rule out any possibility of the strayed animal’s presence outside its original habitat,” Shukla said.