Tiger Scare Puts Villages Around Mysore Airport On Alert

BENGALURU: Villagers surrounding Mysore Airport have been put on alert by forest officials of Mysore Division after a tiger was caught on camera in the airport premises on January 5 and has crossed over to nearby villages from the Airport premises. As a precautionary measure, forest officials have warned villagers from venturing out after dusk and also not to pay attention to rumours being spread over the presence of a tiger in their vicinity.

The Mysore Airport is about 8-km from Mysore city on Mysore-Ooty road. Sources told Deccan Chronicle on Wednesday “The tiger which strayed to the Airport, a couple of days back, might be a sibling of a tiger killed in a road accident near the airport on January 29, 2024.” The tiger was knocked down by a speeding car going towards Nanjangud when the animal met with an accident.

Meanwhile, forest officials gathered clues over the tiger and came across the tiger jumping the barbed wire fence of the airport to nearby villages/fields. While taking a jump, the tiger has injured itself and forest personnel engaged in combing operation at the airport noticed blood stains and its guard hairs/underfur of the animal.

Mysore Division Deputy Conservator of Forest (DCF) K. Paramesh said the personnel attached to Mysore Division and Leopard Task Force were engaged in combing operation and came across pug marks of the tiger about 1.5 km away from the Mysore Airport. However, forest officials pressed into action thermal drones to catch tiger movement, if any, but did not come across any.

As a precautionary measure, a walkthrough cage has been placed in the airport premises to trap the tiger. Besides, tamed elephants-Prashanth, Ranjan, Harsha and Sugreeva, adept in tiger capture operations, have been kept ready.

While a historian and a researcher said “There was a continuous stretch of forest connecting Chamundi Hill near Mysuru city to forest borders of Bandipur Tiger Reserve, about 50-km but over the time, fragmentation of forests cut off the link. Now, tigers seem to have made a comeback to their old territory.”

But, forest officials observe that the outskirts of Mysuru city offer plenty of wild boars for the tiger to prey upon and has been a contributing factor for tigers to take refuge in villages close to Mysuru city.