A tiger has undertaken an 1,100km odyssey across four states, skirting human settlements and Maoist mines, evading the prying eyes of poachers and taking in its stride the summer swelter.
All for love.
The big cat had set off from Madhya Pradesh in search of a mate and reached Bonai in Sundergarh district of Odisha in March, having walked a distance of 700km that traversed stretches of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
It has now made it to the Similipal Tiger Reserve in Mayurbhanj district, about 400km from Bonai. Officials are thankful that the amorous feline was able to reach the core of Similipal in mid-April unharmed by forest fires, common during the summer.
They hope the six-year-old male’s search for a mate would now end in the wilds of the state’s largest tiger reserve. If that happens, it can break a cycle of inbreeding that has blighted Similipal’s tigers with genetic disorders.
Till Friday, the forest department says, Similipal had received fire alerts for 115 points this year. The tiger reserve deployed hundreds of forest officials and members of the Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force to douse the fires.
But the canny cat from the Sanjay-Dubri Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh seemed to have smartly sidestepped them all.
“Tigers regaining their lost homeland in Odisha,” the principal chief conservator of forest (wildlife) and chief wildlife warden, Susanta Nanda, tweeted.
“This male tiger has travelled across 3 states from central Indian landscape and has been camera trapped close to Similipal Tiger Reserve. Exciting prospects of adding to the gene pool of the STR.”
Nanda later confirmed to The Telegraph that the same tiger had been spotted in Bonai last March, captured by one of the cameras installed for the All Odisha Tiger Estimation, 2023-2024.
Unable to find a female partner there, the Bengal tiger then advanced towards Similipal, which has 13 female tigers in addition to 14 males.
The arrival of the new tiger has pepped up Similipal officials particularly because they are worried about the increase in melanistic (black) tigers in the reserve.
Thirteen tigers in Similipal are melanistic, which means they have thick black stripes placed close together, covering up most of the brown
background.
Environmentalists say these tigers are the product of a genetic disorder caused by inbreeding that can, in the long run, affect the population of the normal golden-coated Bengal tigers.
The new tiger, with its lush golden-brown coat and black stripes, holds out the promise of widening the gene pool.
“At present, in the Similipal Tiger Reserve, inbreeding is leading to genetic disorder. Normal and natural mating with tigers from outside the reserve is necessary to overcome the aberration,” an official said.
