A tiger was captured on Friday by West Bengal forest department officials from a village outside the big cat’s core habitat in the Sundarbans.
It was searching for food and left pugmarks that led to its captureKOLKATA: A tiger was captured on Friday by West Bengal forest department officials from a village outside the big cat’s core habitat in the Sundarbans mangrove forest. The tiger had strayed into the village in search of food and left pugmarks that led to his capture.
“We captured the tiger early Friday without using any tranquilliser. A goat was kept as bait and the tiger walked into the trap,” Sundarbans tiger reserve (STR) field director Niraj Singhal said. The tiger was captured from Jharkhali area of the outer Sundarbans
in South 24 Parganas district, about 120 km from Kolkata.
“The tiger had strayed into the village area on Thursday and the pugmarks helped us capture him,” Singhal said.
Atanu Raha, principal chief conservator in the state government, said the tiger had sustained an injury on his right hind foot before being captured.
He added that the injury was not due to a fight with another tiger but its cause was yet to be ascertained.
According to experts, a Sundarbans tiger generally strays out of the forest when hunting becomes difficult due to old age or injury. On some occasions it loses direction.
The Sundarbans, which comprises about 10,000 sq km of marshlands and mangrove forests along the coast of the Bay of Bengal, is one of the last natural habitats of the tiger. A pregnant tigress was captured Feb 18 and then released into the wild after she strayed into a South 24 Parganas village.
While the latest tiger census did not cover the Sundarbans, forest officials said there were 249 tigers in the Sundarban tiger reserve and 279 in greater Sundarbans when the census was last conducted in 2001-02.
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