The carcass of a male tiger was found in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve (BTR) on Wednesday, the second death of a big cat in the protected forest in the past week, an official said on Wednesday.
A patrolling team spotted the dead tiger in Tala beat of BTR, said Lakhan Lal Uike, chief conservator of forest (CCF) and in-charge field director of the reserve.
The carcass of the tiger, aged around 5-7 years, had teeth marks on the body, he said.
Prima facie it seems that the death was caused by a fight with another tiger, the official said.
On September 15, the decomposed and headless carcass of a tiger was found in BTR’s Patehra beat, an official said earlier. It was disposed of as per the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) guidelines. The viscera would be sent to a laboratory for examination, a release had said then.
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In the recent census, the number of tigers in Madhya Pradesh rose to 785 in 2022 from 526 in 2018.
As per the report ‘Status of Tigers: Co-predators & Prey in India-2022’, released by the NTCA and Wildlife Institute of India in July this year, MP has the highest number of tigers in the country, followed by Karnataka (563) and Uttarakhand (560).
