A Royal Bengal tigress in Madhya Pradesh’s Pench Tiger Reserve (PTR), popularly known as Collarwali Baghin, continues to break records as she has yet again given birth — the eighth time — to four cubs. Before this eighth litter, she was already a proud mother of 26 cubs.
The heartwarming news has come on the eve of an international meet being held in Delhi from Monday where 12 tiger-range countries will discuss the status of target set in 2010 to double global wild tiger population.
In 2010, 13 countries had committed to and endorsed the St Petersburg declaration for doubling global wild tiger population and the global tiger recovery programme. This is the third such stocktaking after two previous ones in 2012 and 2014, which were held in Delhi and Dhaka, respectively.
Globally, between 3,500 and 3,800 tigers are estimated to be in the wild with 2,226 of them in India alone.
Collarwali, who lives in the Karmajhiri range in the core area of Pench, had given birth to 26 cubs in seven litters between 2008 and 2017, field director Subhranjan Sen said. Officially called T-15, she is a major tourist attraction at the tiger reserve and has become almost as popular as “Machhli”, the legendary Ranthambore National Park tigress who died last year.
The Department of Posts had issued a special cover envelope featuring Collarwali last year. Also called the “Queen of Pench” and “Pench Princess”, Collarwali was born to another famous tigress, “Barimada”, who featured in the documentary Spy in the Jungle.
The radio collar that lent her name “Collarwali Baghin” had been fitted on her in 2009, when she was four, for monitoring her movement. Just four of the reserve’s 50 tigers and tigresses are radio-collared. The collar fitted on the “Collarwali Baghin” worked for about two years, and fell off her neck in August 2016.
While India and Nepal have doubled their tiger population since the 2010 declaration, officials from the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) said, most other countries, with the exception of Thailand, are largely struggling.
