The last moment decision by a team of forest officials and veterinary experts on Sunday to temporarily abandon the operation to relocate two tigers from Kanha Tiger Reserve to Panna Tiger Reserve puts a question mark on the state forest department’s preparedness to go ahead with its plan to repopulate the Panna habitat with tigers under foolproof and natural conditions.
Director, Panna Tiger Reserve, Srinivas Murthy broke the news on Sunday afternoon by telling this newspaper that the much awaited relocation plan for Sunday has been postponed by a week due to “technical reasons”. He refused to elaborate further saying he is yet to receive more information from Kanha.
The Madhya Pradesh chief wildlife warden H.S. Pabla, who was present in Kanha along with the state principal chief conservator of forest R.S. Negi to oversee the relocation exercise, was not available for comments on Sunday. A forest department source at Kanha revealed “on examining the animals from a short distance, they found that they were not physically fit to travel. Hence they dropped the plan to tranquilise them.” He went on to inform this correspondent that the tigers would be examined again after 7 days to assess whether or not they were fit to travel.
The tigers to be relocated are females. Both are now about 6 years old. They were orphaned cubs initially brought up in a small enclosure which was later enlarged to cover an area of about 5 hectares. The fact that both these tigers were found unfit by veterinary experts to undertake an 8-hour road journey for being relocated from Kanha to Panna raises serious questions about the habitat where they have been kept along with its prey-base and also their ability to go for the kill and catch their prey independently under natural conditions. The tiger relocation exercise is being pursued vigorously by the state wildlife wing of the forest department to meet the objective of repopulating the Panna Tiger habitat.