The world-famous Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan, known for its majestic tigers has come across with a worrying situation as over the past year, 25 out of the park’s 75 tigers have been missing. This figure of missing tigers has been stated in a government order issued by the Chief Wildlife Warden Pavan Kumar Upadhyay who formed a three - members committee to investigate the matter.
In his order dated November 4, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) and Chief Wildlife Warden Pavan Kumar Upadhyay has highlighted ongoing concerns about missing tigers from the park and noted that despite reminders sent to the park’s field director, there hasn’t been much improvement.
'Information about the disappearance of tigers in Ranthambore Tiger Reserve has been coming in the Tiger Monitoring Report for a long time. In this regard, several letters have also been written to the Field Director, Ranthambore Tiger Reserve, but no satisfactory change is visible in the situation,” Upadhyay said.
The order cites a report dated October 14, which states that as of mid-October 2024, 11 tigers have been missing for more than a year, and 14 others have shown very little recent activity on monitoring devices.Looking at the situation, an inquiry committee has been constituted to look into the matter. The committee will investigate the missing tigers and submit its report within two months.The job of the committee is to look at monitoring data and find out if there were any oversights by park staff. The investigation would focus on 14 tigers that have not been seen since May to September of this year.
“ We have identified some monitoring gaps that we want to address. Recently, I started collecting weekly monitoring reports, which showed that these tigers were not recorded on trap camera. This matter is being taken very seriously," said Upadhyay. Notably, this is the highest number of tigers reported missing in a single year. Between January 2019 and January 2022, only 13 tigers were reported missing, making this a significant spike.As per the wildlife experts, the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve with 75 tigers, including cubs and younger ones has a dense tiger population and this overcrowding leads to territorial fights among the big cats and their movements in nearby villages.
Dharmendra Khandal associated with Tiger Watch said," I doubt that this number of tigers is missing but certainly overcrowding is a big issue which leads to the territorial fights and even poisoning the tigers who reached to the nearby villages."Just a couple of days ago a tiger T 86 was allegedly killed by villagers who suspected him to have killed a 51-year-old man in Uliyana village. The preliminary investigation suggests that the tiger was attacked by sharp weapons and stones. An FIR has been registered of killing the tiger against unidentified people.
