Amaravati: The elusive male tiger, who strayed into Telangana from neighbouring Maharashtra’s Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve, terrorising villagers for a week, was successfully captured in Andhra Pradesh on Friday, February 6.
The wild cat, moving through human habitations near Rajahmundry in East Godavari district for the last six days, was captured by the forest officials.
Hyderabad Tiger Conservation Society (HyTICOS), which undertook tiger rescue operations in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, was roped in for the exercise. After strenuous efforts involving expert teams from Pune and Delhi, the big cat was captured in Kurmapuram village in Rayavaram mandal of East Godavari.
Officials fired a tranquiliser to capture the tiger near a lake. Earlier, a forest team had spotted the animal in the backyard of a deserted house near the village and launched an operation.
District Forest Officer B Prabhakara Rao said that due to the commotion by the surrounding people, the big cat got frightened, ran into the nearby fields and entered a cattle shed. Though there were two buffaloes in the cattle shed, the tiger did not harm them.
The forest officials reportedly fired three tranquilliser shots, and one of them hit the tiger. It then ran towards a nearby lake, where it was finally captured. The officials were making arrangements to shift the tiger to Visakhapatnam Zoo.
The officials had requested people in one kilometer radius to remain indoors. Since the tiger’s nature is very sensitive, people were requested not to create any obstacles to its movements.
Following this, the team executed the operation successfully. Police provided full cooperation to the Forest Department for this operation. Officials stated that the tiger had only attacked cattle and there have been no attacks on humans.
The big cat killed eight cattle during the last six days in areas surrounding Rajahmundry town, triggering panic among people and prompting the Forest Department to launch a massive operation.
Specialised teams of forest officials conducted extensive searches around villages where the tiger attacked the cattle.
Authorities had installed 25 trap cameras along potential tiger routes, cattle attack zones, and water sources to track the tiger’s movements. The expert committee, constituted by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), made the decision to tranquilise the tiger to prevent further incidents.
The Pune-based expert team from RESQ Trust had joined the NTCA-designated experts to monitor the movements of the tiger.
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