BHUBANESWAR/ Bhopal: Odisha government has decided that tigress Sunadri, which was brought from Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in 2018 as part of big cat translocation programme, would be shifted to Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh.
The decision comes two weeks after a directive by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to immediately shift the tigress to Madhya Pradesh.
Odisha Chief Wildlife Warden Hari Shankar Upadhyay, on Friday said that the state government has written to its M.P. counterpart, requesting it to take back Sundari in line with NTCA directive.
In Odisha, Sundari was released into Satkosia Tiger Reserve in August the same year. The state forest department, however, was forced to relocate the big cat into a special rehabilitation enclosure after the death of two persons and a bullock at Baghamunda and Tainsi villages inside the reserve area after the tigress attack sparked protests.
Criticising the state government for violating the standard operating procedure (SOP) by keeping the tigress inside the enclosure, NTCA wrote to the Odisha chief secretarymaintaining that “tigress cannot be allowed to be kept in a small enclosure for any longer. Therefore, in interest of tiger conservation, the it shall be withdrawn and brought to Kanha Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, with immediate effect for re-wilding”
NTCA also made it clear that there will be no inter-state translocation in Odisha, henceforth. The development has threatened to trigger a row between the two states, with M.P. declaring to thwart any move to relocate Sundari if it was found unfit to be released in wild.
Conservationist Ajey Dubey slammed Odisha forest department’s failure to save M.P.’S male tiger, which was poisoned to death in Satkosia, leading the experiment to fail. “Satkosia tiger reserve is highly vulnerable to poaching causing disappearance of big cats in the reserve,” he said
