Telangana: Tiger covering nearly 30km each night in search of home

HYDERABAD: A male tiger that set off on an exploratory trek in Telangana’s Bhupalpally region — the first such instance in 17 years — is moving around at a brisk pace for the past one week. It has entered the dense forest area of Tadicherla forest range in Malharrao mandal after crossing the Boggulavagu project, which was a tiger territory in the late 1990s. The big cat is currently moving along Manair river, a tributary of Godavari.
A two-member team, specially deployed by the forest department to monitor the animal’s movements, informed that the tiger is travelling around 20km to 30km every night sinceit started its journey from either Maharashtra’s Tadoba tiger reserve or Chhattisgarh’s Indravati tiger reserve.
“The pug marks of the tiger were last sighted on Saturday near Manair after it crossed Boggulavagu project and Koyyur range on Friday. It is right now in the interior areas of the forest and is on the move in its search for a territory,” said forest beat officer Srikanth Boosa, who is among the two officials monitoring the tiger’s movement.
Initially, pug marks sighted at two locations let the villagers to believe that there were two different tigers. However, the forest officials who took measurements of the pug marks clarified that it was the same tiger.
“The equal measurements at both the locations revealed that it was the same tiger,” K Purushotham, district forest officer (DFO), told TOI. “Like any other migrating tiger, it is resting during the day and travelling more than 20km every night, leaving pug marks at different locations.”