A herd of 75 spotted deer was released at the hilly Buxa Tiger Reserve (BTR) in Alipurduar district late on Thursday evening.

The release of the deer, foresters said, was a part of the programme taken up by the department to augment the prey base at the reserve and make it an ideal habitat for tigers.

Subhankar Sengupta, the field director of BTR, said the deer were brought from the Ballavpur Wildlife Sanctuary located in Birbhum district.

“As there is a plan to reintroduce tigers in Buxa, it is necessary to augment prey base here at the reserve. Earlier too, we had released around 200 spotted deer in the reserve area. On Thursday evening, another 75 were released. Soon, we will bring in some sambars (another deer species) from Jaldapara National Park. Those would also be released here in the wild,” Sengupta said.

Earlier this year, it was decided that six tigers in all would be released at the Buxa reserve in two phases, forest sources said.

Though Buxa was notified as a tiger reserve back in 1983, direct sightings of the big cat have not been recorded for three decades now.

Some foresters, however, have claimed in the meanwhile that they did find indirect evidence of tigers such as claw marks on trees and carcasses of herbivores.

However, as no tigers had been spotted in the BTR area, the same was also said in the tiger census conducted in 2018.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) eventually announced three tigers from Kaziranga in Assam would be reintroduced in Buxa. It allotted a sum of Rs 12 crore to prepare the BTR as a tiger habitat for the process of reintroduction. The figure was later raised to six tigers.