Mahaveer Dead, Sundari In Confinement: India’s 'First Ever' Tiger Relocation Project Halted

The ‘first-ever inter-state tiger translocation’ project in India has been ‘temporarily stalled’ after one of the two Royal Bengal Tigers (RBTs) brought to the Satkosia Tiger Reserve (STR) in Odisha’s Angul district from the Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh last summer was found dead on Wednesday afternoon. The tiger was nicknamed MB 2 alias ‘Mahaveer’.

“We have decided to temporarily suspend the tiger relocation project after such a huge incident. A final decision on the project, however, will be taken after we assess the situation,” Additional Director General (ADG), National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) told leading Odia TV channel OTV this afternoon.

With Tigress ‘Sundari’ languishing in an enclosure after killing two locals near the Satkosia Tiger Reserve, the death of the male tiger has effectively sounded the death knell of the ambitious project. Sundari was brought from Kanha weeks before ‘Mahaveer’.

He was found dead by forest officials deep inside the Nuaguda forest range on Wednesday afternoon. “There was a lacerated wound on its neck and maggots had formed on it,” said Sandeep Tripathy, principal chief conservator of forests (PCCF), Wildlife, who has rushed to the spot after getting the news. Post-mortem of the dead tiger by a team of expert veterinarians under the supervision of the field Director, STR and a representative a team from the NTCA, would reveal the exact reason for the tiger’s death, he said. However, he has ruled out the possibility that the radio collar attached to monitor its movement may have caused the wound that ultimately led to the tiger's death.

Tripathy revealed that signals were received from the radio collar affixed on the tiger’s body till 10 am on Wednesday after which it stopped. Efforts to contact the team supervising the post-mortem, which includes noted environmentalist Biswajit Mohanty as the NTCA representative, proved futile as the area is out of reach of the mobile network.

 Initial unconfirmed reports had suggested that the tiger may have been caught in a snare and killed by poachers or locals angry over the killing of two villagers by ‘Sundari’. However, Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of STR Ramaswamy P, who visited the spot soon after getting the news of the death, said there was nothing to suggest that was the case.

 “On prima facie investigation of the carcass, a deep lacerated 5-day old Magotted infected wound was observed in the dorsal neck region of the tiger, which may be the reason for the mortality. The site of the incident was not disturbed as per the NTCA protocol. Hence, the exact reason for the mortality and the time of the incidence will be ascertained after conducting the detailed post-mortem examination,” said Ramaswamy, who has been appointed as the investigating officer (IO) into the death.

 Giving details of the incident, he said in a press release that the first information about the tiger death was received from the tiger monitoring team deployed in the area at about 1 pm on Wednesday. The carcass was found 500 meters from the forest road from Raiguda to Nuagada inside the Nugada reserve forest (RF) under the Athagarh forest division ‘proposed to be included in STR’.

 Whatever the reason behind the death of Mahaveer, there is little doubt that it is a huge setback for an ambitious project launched under the supervision of NTCA. With Tigress Sundari now in confinement after killing two humans and several cattle, it is hard to see how the project can progress from here, especially with the people of about 100 villages abutting STR up in arms over the killings.

 The plan was to ‘import’ a total of six tigers in a bid to increase the tiger population in Satkosia, which had dwindled to just one from a high of 12 when it was declared a tiger reserve in 2007.