Bhubaneswar: The Madhya Pradesh government has agreed to send an experts team to capture Royal Bengal Tigress ‘Sundari’ in the Satkosia Wildlife Sanctuary in Angul district, an official said Thursday.
The move came after the state government requested Madhya Pradesh to send an experts team to capture Sundari after its forest officials failed to sedate the tigress in the wild despite several attempts.
“We have received a communique from the Madhya Pradesh government on Thursday that they would send special teams to capture the tigress in Satkosia Wildlife Sanctuary,” Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) Sandeep Tripathi told reporters.
He said the department had made a request about 2-3 days earlier to send an experts team to tranquilize and capture the tigress, who has allegedly killed two persons.
“The Madhya Pradesh government has agreed to send two specialist teams from the Kanha National Park and Pench Tiger Reserve. The teams will arrive at the Satkosia sanctuary in 2-3 days and start their operation to capture Sundari,” Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) Sudarshan Panda told the media.
Meanwhile, three teams have been deployed to tranquilize the big cat and bring the animal inside the enclosure.
Sources said a tranquilizer shot at the tigress by the team missed the target Wednesday. The team had kept goats in cages and even sprayed the urine of a male tiger to attract the animal Tuesday night. Though the tigress came out, she later ran away to another place, said the sources.
The tigress was relocated from Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve to Satkosia wildlife sanctuary June 28 in a pilot inter-state transfer project to increase the big cat population in the state.
However, the locals are hell-bent on their demand to shift the tigress from the forest after it killed two humans.
Sundari had allegedly mauled a man to death at Tainsi village October 21. It had allegedly killed a 35-year-old woman in the area September 12.
Agencies
