MP: Tiger killed near Bhopal for its paws, 22nd death this year

Tiger | Reuters Representative image | Reuters

After a villager near Bhopal confessed that he chopped off the paws of a tiger four days back, the poaching of the big cats in Madhya Pradesh has once again become a major concern for wildlife enthusiasts. The toll of tiger deaths in Madhya Pradesh has reached 22 this year as against 26 last year.

Madhya Pradesh used to have the highest number of tigers in India. On Wednesday, an eight-year-old tiger was found dead with severed paws near Ratapani Wildlife Sanctuary, 40km from Bhopal. Officials suspected it was a case of poaching for black magic as the tiger's front paws were chopped off and the hair around its tail and eyelashes was missing. Later, a villager named Harchand Singh of Bineka and his four accomplices were arrested.

Ratapani, spread over 890sqkm in the Bhopal-Raisen forest division, is home to 12-15 dominant tigers. Ratapani is likely to be notified as a tiger reserve after getting in-principle approval from the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in 2008.

Once called the tiger state, Madhya Pradesh is home to over 20 per cent of the tiger population in India. It had 308 tigers as per the 2014 wildlife census. Madhya Pradesh also has the highest number of tiger reserves in the country with six—Panna, Kanha, Bandhavgarh, Satpura, Pench and Sanjay Gandhi National Park.

Madhya Pradesh is also a hub to poachers who regularly exploit the wildlife in the region with a deep entrenched network of smugglers around the protected forest areas. According to a forest department official, primarily nomadic tribes like Pardis, Bhelias and Bawarias are involved in the trade, but with the recent growth in the business of new species, many educated people are also getting involved, said a wildlife officer. The trade is now going online, but the poaching remains with the poor and uneducated people living around the forest areas.

Earlier, in July, forest department sources claimed that going by the preliminary figures of the tiger presence released by the headquarters of Madhya Pradesh wildlife department, the state may soon get back its status of “tiger state”. The position had gone to Karnataka in 2014, when the population of tigers dwindled drastically in Madhya Pradesh.

Madhya Pradesh has had a huge population of wild cats in its juggles, which are spread over 30 per cent of its geographical area. Ever since the creation of the first tiger reserve in the 1980s in the state, Madhya Pradesh had been home to the highest number of tigers in the country.

Till 2002, Madhya Pradesh had over 700 tigers. The Panna Tiger Reserve and other habitats of tigers saw several cases of poaching and unnatural deaths of the big cats.

In recently released data of geographical mapping by State Forest Research Institute, the number of places at which tigers had been sighted by state officials was recorded at 1,432 as opposed to 717 such sightings in 2014.

Officials of the forest department point out that this evidence means more animals will be present when the annual tiger count is done by the year-end. As per the 2014 tiger census, Madhya Pradesh had 308 big cats, while Karnataka had 403, the highest in the country.

According to forest officials looking after wildlife protection in the state, the current data suggests that tiger population may reach over 400.

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