There were four big cats in all, two males, two females, three of them translocated, one an interloper, who had wandered 150 km to find this range. It seemed like everything was in place for Mukundra Tiger Reserve (MTR), India’s newest, launched just two years back near Kota in Rajasthan. All four adult tigers were from the Ranthambore National Park, and they had arrived in the one-year period between April 2018 and April 2019. And with both females, named MT-2 and MT-4, having cubs around May-June this year, officials were almost ready to call it another big cat success story for India.

Almost, for it all went downhill very fast. In the last 10 days of July, the park lost two of the four adult tigers (MT-2 and MT-3, the male who had wandered in), a cub was killed, while another, rescued in critical condition, died on August 17. Also, MT-4 and the newborns, caught on a trip camera in May, seem to have gone missing. “The deaths are a big setback we'll have to rethink our strategy for the park,” says a top officer of the Rajasthan forest and wildlife department.

The authorities suspect that one of the male tigers killed MT-2 and one of her cubs. A second cub is also now dead. The male MT-3 was reportedly anaemic and succ­umbed to some virus. Both the dead adult tigers had expensive radio tracking collars, but in an almost farcical situation, the satellite GPS system was on the blink because the government had not renewed the subscription.

“The tragedy has shocked me. It’s sheer call­ousness that has led to the loss of our pride,” says Diya Kumari, BJP MP and member of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA). The Rajasthan government has taken action against a few officials, but sources at the park say things had not been right for some time now.

Notified in 2013, MTR stre­tches 780 sq. km across the Kota, Bundi, Chitt­or­garh and Jhalawar districts of Rajasthan. Encouraged by Sariska’s partial success with translocation, eight big cats from Ranthambore were shifted there after poachers had wiped out the original population in 2005, the government chose Mukundra for the state’s third tiger park. MTR has a capacity for 12 tigers and was a natural extension of Ranthambore, the big cats had been venturing out that side seeking new territories.

In 2018, the Rajasthan wildlife department shifted two tigers, a male (MT-1) and a female (MT-2), into an 80 sq. km enclosure in Mashalpura, located at the southern end of MTR. In February 2019, MT-3 suddenly made an appearance here. The entry created tensions between the two males. In April 2019, the tigress MT-4 was introduced, hoping she would be a distraction for MT-3. Critics say the authorities should have partially dismantled the enclosure; it would have reduced chances of friction between the males, and also given MT-2 enough space to hide her cubs if she felt unsafe with MT-1. MT-3’s post-mortem revealed that the male was relying on easy-to-kill cattle. The tiger was also a bare bones 92 kg, suggesting it had been unwell for some time and the officials were clueless about it.

The lag of days in discovering the deaths, MT-2’s carcass was found 48 hours after the tigress’s death, especially in a small area, including an enclosure, suggests serious lapses, and reaffirms the findings that the state lacks proper tiger management, including veterinary doctors with expertise. The 2018 Man­agement Effectiveness Evaluation (MEE), an audit of India’s tiger res­erves by the Union ministry for environm­ent, forests and climate change, had downgraded two reserves in Rajasthan, Ranthambore and Sar­iska, from ‘good’ to ‘fair’. Four parks were downgraded among the country’s 50 tiger reserves.