Eleven tigers disappeared and six other died during the last four years at the Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan. Park authorities disclosed that from 2009, these tigers were reported missing at regular interval, and efforts to trace them yielded only six carcasses.
Officials said it was not clear how these tigers had died — whether fell prey to poachers or they died of natural causes, including old age, infighting, starvation.
But they have reason to suspect foul play because there is no trace of 11 other tigers, including six cubs. “If they had died of natural causes, their remains should have been recovered by now,” said an official.
The disappearance of tigress T-17, popularly known as Sundari, since the first week of March, has once again set off alarm bells.
Half of big cat population in Ranthambore National Park was cubs. Sundari has been traceless for the last two months. She has left behind three 11-month-old cubs at the mercy of forest officials.
The forest and park officials have launched relentless search to locate the tigress, which was known as pride of Ranthambore, but so far there has been no clue of her.
However, tiger experts are critical of the RNP and forest officials. According to Dharmendra Khandal of Tiger Watch, initially park authorities tried their best to locate the missing tigers, but after sometime they forgot about them.
Harshvardhan, secretary, Tourist and Wildlife Society, pointed out that due to lack of security and casual attitude of the forest department way back in 2004, all the 14 tigers in Sariska Tiger Reserve (STR) disappeared from this forest.
At that time the State Government had constituted a Tiger Force which had recommended 107 measures to be taken to save and conserve tigers in RNP and STR. Khandal claims that none of these recommendations were fully implemented and many of them remained on the papers because of apathy of officials of the forest department.
Five years ago, the Wildlife Institutes of India had recommended to the State Government that it should
create a corridor to connect RNP with the adjoining Kaildevi and Mansingh Sanctuary, to allow the tigers to move from RNP owing to crunch of space for their growing population.
"The area of about 392 square kilometres of RNP for a population of 50 tigers in this forest is too small," says Khandal. YK Sahu, DFO Sawai Madhopre, under which RNP falls, said the department was in the process of making corridor from RNP to allow some tigers to shift in these forests. As part of the initiative, so far four villages have been shifted to another area.
According to experts, brawling among tigers has become frequent in RNP where ratio of male and female tiger has crossed the standard norms. Experts said the ideal male-female ratio in any reserve forest should be two male and six female. But in RNP there are 25 male and 22 female tigers.