No reason to celebrate Kaziranga's 'golden' tigers, say park officials

Last Saturday, a photograph of a tiger from Assam’s Kaziranga National Park sparked social media frenzy. Shared by IFS officer Parveen Kaswan, netizens marvelled at the big cat with a striking colour and began calling it the “golden tiger”.

Unfortunately, park officials sought to puncture the enthusiasm, telling DH that there were three more tigers with almost the same colouration in Kaziranga. They also said the golden colour was nothing to celebrate as far as the future of tigers was concerned.

The “golden tiger”, park officials said, was an example of unusual colour aberration, and it could be due to excessive inbreeding, one of the main reasons for population decline among tigers in the wild.

“The biological reason of colour aberration may be due to excessive inbreeding caused by habitat destruction and loss of connectivity. The recessive genes are showing up due to inbreeding within a fragmented population,” said a document shared by Rabin Sharma, research officer of Kaziranga Tiger Reserve.

A document shared with DH by the park director P Sivakumar said the tigress — with lighter yellowish skin, lighter black stripes and more whitish expressions in the abdominal and in the facial region — was first photo-captured in 2014. She was camera trapped in 2015, 2016, 2017 and later also.

IFS officer Kaswan, however, claimed that the “golden tiger” was photographed in April this year by Mumbai-based wildlife photographer Mayuresh Hendre.

Wildlife biologist Kamal Azad said the tigress was about two years old when it was first seen in 2014.

“So it must be seven to eight years old now,” said Azad, who was earlier associated with National Tiger Conservation Authority. “Normally, a tigress gives birth at the age of three to four years. So, already she must have given birth in the wild. So it will be interesting to see whether her colour aberration has been carried to her successor or not.”