Captured tigress dies in Bhadra reserve

  The tigress which was shifted to Bhadra tiger reserve by the Forest Department, after it was trapped at a private resort at Nagarhole National Park died on Saturday morning.

Forest Department officials  said that the four-year-old tigress may have died of fatigue and hunger. However,  they are waiting for the postmortem report.

Officials said that the animal, when it was caught from Cidada on May 29 in the Antharasanthe range, was preying on cattle. “It was probably  too weak to hunt, or had probably found an easy living by preying on cattle. Therefore, even in a place like Bhadra, where the prey density was more, it appears to have  succumbed to fatigue and hunger. Even the effects of sedatives administered during transportation might have compounded its problems,” said B K Singh, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) and Chief Wildlife Warden.

However he said that the details of postmortem are awaited and will take at least a week.
Singh said that as per policy, a captured wild tiger has to be rehabilitated immediately without taking it to a zoo or any other other place. They decided on taking the tigress to Bhadra because of abundance of prey, and minimal human interference.

When asked about the proposed radio collaring of the tigress, Singh said that it could not be done as the arrival of the collar from Maharashtra was delayed.

“When it arrived, the animal was in its senses. We decided against collaring it because collaring required another sedation. We did not want to risk that,” he stated.