Quick disillusionment at Ranthambore

Not long back there was delight among Tiger lovers. 11 new cubs born to T-5,T-21,T-13 and T-31 were sighted at Ranthambore national park. The glee has taken a little pounding after the recent news.

First T-13’s venturing out of the park with her cubs. This might have been to safe guard the cubs from the dominant males near her Sultanpur territory. Some time back she was found in a confrontation with star male T-28, this might have given rise to the unsafe environment for the cubs. Air lifting of cubs father T-12 to Sariska didn’t help either. Recently, she has been sighted near the Chambal River along with her cubs. She is not successful in crossing the river since the cubs are too young for this. But the worst is T-13 who brought up T-38 and T-39, must safe guard herself and the cubs from the hands of the poachers now.

There has been a continuing story that tigers fromThen loss of T-5 came as a very big disappointment. She was badly wounded and didn’t really recover after that. The injuries might have been due to a conflict with tigress T-17. Minor surgery was done on the wound a few days back but still surgery couldn’t save her. T-5’s cubs are still in the forest but its extremely difficult for them to survive as they are too young to hunt for their food. Hope the forest department can take these cubs in at the earliest and bring them up like what they did to T-36 and T-37 cubs of the Guda female. It seems these cubs will be moved to Sariska but not before couple of years under the watchful eyes of the forest officials.

The other incident was T-26 venturing out of the park a week ago. Not long before she was sighted along with 3 of her cubs in the Indala region of the park.

Ranthambore are straying out frequently. Male tiger T-38 has found a new home for himself at Madhya pradesh’s Kuno-Palpur sanctuary. He strayed out of the park six months ago and travelled nearly 100km to reach his new home. Experts believe he will further move towards Madho National Park since there are no tigress’s at Kuno-Palpur. Another male Tiger T-7 has travelled 200km to reach Bharatpur. But the process of relocating him to Sariska national park is already underway.

These suggest that the tiger population in the park is growing and space constraint has become a major issue. Some tigers have ventured out to find territory for themselves outside the park. It’s left to the authorities now to monitor and draw up some specific plans to help these big cats.