Poacher's Snare Claims NSTR Tigress After 26-Day Struggle
The tigress, which was first seen with a tightly wound poacher’s snare around its neck in camera trap images in June this year, was tranquilised by the tiger reserve staff on July 6. Sad somehow managed to shake off the snare but had a hole in her throat.
Hyderabad: The four-and-a-half year old tigress – T132F – that suffered a huge gaping hole in its throat after getting caught in a poacher’s wire snare in the Nagarjunasagar Srisailam tiger reserve, and was rescued by the reserve staff, has died after 26 days of prolonged likely extreme agony at the Sri Venkateswara Zoological Park in Tirupati where it was taken for treatment.
“The tigress died on Friday night. Though we tried everything we could, we could not save it,” a zoo official said.
The tigress, which was first seen with a tightly wound poacher’s snare around its neck in camera trap images in June this year, was tranquilised by the tiger reserve staff on July 6. Sad somehow managed to shake off the snare but had a hole in her throat.
Since the reserve lacked facilities for treating wounded tigers, the tigress was rushed to Tirupati and the first of two surgeries to close the hole were performed at the Sri Venkateswara Veterinary University. Over the next week, the tigress underwent a second surgery after the first one failed to close the wound.
The animal, which was shifted to the zoo for care until an expert from South Africa could be called, according to zoo officials, had extreme difficulty in eating, and drinking water as anything she took into her mouth would fall off through the hole in her throat which after the second failed surgery grew to four inches in length.
“Each surgery to stitch the wound up took two hours, and the animal was in deep distress after repeated sedations, first when it was tranquilized, and then during the two surgeries. Despite our best efforts to provide her with large sized beef chunks injected with water to keep her fed and hydrated, it was getting progressively weak and died on Friday night,” a zoo official said.
Incidentally, the NSTR management had made a 5 minute 37 second video on rescue of T132F and released it on International Tiger Day on July 29, portraying it as a success story of how the tiger reserve works hard to save each and every one of its tigers.
On July 29, the day the video was released the reserve had 87 tigers. With T132F falling prey to a poacher’s snare, the reserve now has 86 tigers.
Following a mandatory post-mortem examination, the carcass of the tigress, the latest in NSRT to fall prey to poachers, was buried in the Sri Venkateswara Zoological Park premises.
The death of T132F marked the fourth death of a tiger at SV Zoo in the last three years. It may be recalled that a female cub — one of four rescued from the Nandyal forests — died of illness in June 2023. In July 2024, a five-year-old tigress also succumbed to illness. Earlier this year, in April, a two-year-old tiger named Anantha passed away under similar circumstances.
