Suspicion on Karnataka forest authorities over tiger menace in Wayanad

As the over two-week-long efforts of the Kerala forest authorities to capture a tiger that killed over 15 domestic animals were unsuccessful, a section of local people have alleged that the tiger could have been released by the Karnataka forest officials in the adjacent border areas.

The Kerala forest authorities have sought the help of the National Tiger Conservation Authority to get the identity of the tiger based on the images captured in the camera traps.

Kurukanmoola near Manathavady in Wayanad district was facing the tiger menace over the past two weeks. As the efforts to capture the tiger using cages and other methods failed, the Kerala forest authorities even deployed trained elephants to trace the tiger.

On Wednesday, a section of local people raised suspicion that the tiger could have been released by Karnataka forest authorities.

Jacob Sebastian, a member of Mananthavady municipality, told DH that it was strongly believed that the tiger could have been released by Karnataka forest authorities in the Baveli forest areas of Kerala-Karnataka borders. It was learnt from Kerala forest officials that the picture of the tiger captured in the camera traps did not match with tigers spotted in the forest areas of Wayanad as data of tigers used to be collected by the forest authorities regularly. Moreover, tigers were not spotted in the Kurukanmoola region over the last many years even as other wild animals were spotted, he said.

Meanwhile, Wayanad south divisional forest officer Shajna Karim said that there were no official confirmations to such assumptions. Only after the identity of the tiger was received from the National Tiger Conservation Authority any such assumptions could be made.

The Kerala forest authorities received four pictures of the tigers from the camera traps, the latest being on Monday evening. It was also suspected to have suffered injuries. On Tuesday, also one goat was reported killed in the region.

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