Plans Afoot for First Ever Radio-Collaring of a Tiger

Hyderabad: The Telangana forest department, for the first time ever, is all set to study tiger movements in a scientific way in an exercise that is expected to be unveiled in the tiger corridor forests of KB Asifabad district.

If all goes according to plan, the forest department will install its first-ever radio collar on a tiger and as per preliminary plans, the first big cat to get the collar is likely to be a tigress moving in the tiger corridor forests of KB Asifabad district. The most famous tigress to have worn a radio collar was “Collarwali” in Pench Tiger Reserve of Madhya Pradesh which was an icon of the reserve and was most sought after by tourists for sighting. Known as the ‘Queen of Pench’ Collarwali, before its passing of old age in 2022, had given birth to 22 cubs.

If the exercise in Telangana moves ahead as planned, the state too could have its own Collarwali tigress soon. “We are waiting for approvals from the National Tiger Conservation Authority for radio collaring a tigress. And once the permission comes, we will likely take the help of tranquillising and radio-collaring experts from Maharashtra which already has such ongoing studies,” Telangana Chief Wildlife Warden Elusing Meru said.

The reason for picking the Asifabad forests is because most tigers that arrive in the corridor forest areas of the district from Maharashtra or Chhattisgarh and these forests act as the first home to the migrating tigers. While some have made the forests in Asifabad their home — as in the case of the famous Phalguna, a tigress that settled in the Kadamba forest beat in the district and gave birth to two litters of four cubs each.

The Asifabad forests have also seen tigers being killed regularly with the most notable of such incidents being the incident of a male and a cub found dead after consuming a poisoned cattle carcass, with a female and three more cubs, from the same family going missing soon after in January 2024. This year in May, K8, a tigress and a cub born to Phalguna, was also poached in Kagaznagar division of Asifabad district.

While radio collaring of a solitary tigress may not yield information about the movement of all the tigers in the corridor forest areas, officials say the intense monitoring a collar can provide, will help in understanding the movements of the animal, its possible interactions with other tigers and afford better tracking that will help in monitoring other tigers in the forest area too. A radio collar will enable foresters to track the animal wearing it by following the signals emitted from the collar, and plot its movements, its habits.