KOLKATA: A tiger radio-collared in the Sunderbans by foresters, who wanted to study its movement pattern near human habitation, has taken officials by surprise by trav-elling all the way to the Bangladesh part of the mangroves, a journey of about 100km in over four months.
In the course of its long journey, the big cat even crossed a few rivers, some of them wider than a kilometre, foresters confirmed.
According to chief wildlife warden V K Yadav, the male tiger, radio-collared in end-December last year, has mostly stayed in the Bangladesh Sunderbans.
“It was captured from Harinbhanga for-est, just opposite the Harikhali camp under Basirhat range, and later released with the satellite collar on December 27.
After initial movements for a few days on the Indian side, it started venturing into the Talpatti isl-and in Bangladesh Sunderbans and crossed rivers such as Choto Harikhali, Boro Harikhali and even the Raimangal,” Yadav said.
According to him, in over four months — from December 27 to May 11, when the radio collar stopped giving signals — the tiger moved across three islands: Harinbhanga and Khatuajhuri in the Indian Sunderbans, and Talpatti island in the Bangladesh Sunderbans, and mostly stayed in the Bangladesh Sunderbans, and did not even come close to human habitats.
The purpose of the project — jointly taken up by the forest department and WWF-India’s Sunderbans chapter — was to decode negative interactions between tigers and villagers in the Indian Sunderbans.
The last recorded location of the tiger on May 11 was at Talpatti island in Bangladesh.
In January 2017, a tigress was radio-collared and released in the South 24 Parganas division, the buffer area of the forest.
This tiger, too, travelled a linear distance of over 100km in four months to reach the tip of the Bay of Bengal before finally settling in its territory.
Before that, five other tigers — one of which had also ventured into Bangladesh’s Talpatti island — were also radio-collared in the Indian Sunderbans.
The purpose of all those projects was to find the territory and home range of Sunderbans tigers.
This time, the project’s focus was studying man-tiger conflict patterns in the Indian Sunderbans.
On being asked whether the big cat was fine since the collar stopped giving signals after May 11, Yadav said: “The gadget also had a mortality sensor, which gives signals in case of the tiger’s death.
But that didn’t happen.
We also didn’t get any static signals from the collar, which points that the tiger is safe.
In all probability, the collar has slipped off its neck.
In the Sunderbans, salinity in the water can also damage radio collars.” According to him, this tiger was not clicked by camera traps.
“So, it’s possible that it had come from the Bangladesh Sunderbans when we had captured it for collaring,” Yadav added.