ADILABAD: Forest officials and staff allegedly failed to track tigers’ movement and maintain tiger conservation and management up to the expectations of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in the erstwhile Adilabad district.
Though the NTCA mentioned this in its reports in the past, now it is proved with forest officials getting information about the death of a tiger, one year after the incident took place.
It is said that two to three tigers were missing for the last one-and-a-half years from the Adilabad forests but forest officials failed to track them. IN order to save their skin, the forest officials divert the attention of the higher-ups, public and the government by saying that missing tigers were going back to their original habitat in the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra.
After one year, the forest officials came to know about the death of tiger aged about 3-4 years in the cotton fields at Valgonda when it was trapped in the snares put up by the villagers targeting wild boars to save their standing crops in September or October of 2020 in Indravelli mandal in Adilabad district.
This incident exposes the poor informant network of the department as far as tracking the tiger movement is concerned.
Komaram Bheem Asifabad DFO S. Shantharam said they had a good informant network and that was why they got the information about the death of a tiger and added that three months ago they got the information but did not get proper inputs then.
The incident of the death of a tiger at Valgonda exposed the lapses in tiger conservation and management in the Kawal Tiger Reserve (KTR) and also in the tiger corridors and KTR buffer zone in the erstwhile Adilabad district.
There are more allegations that the forest officials are focusing more on getting funds from the Central government in the name of tiger conservation and migration of more tigers into Kagaznagar Forest Division. But, in reality the safety and security of the tigers is under threat on various fronts in erstwhile Adilabad district.
The forest officials failed to track a tiger that was injured and was moving in the Kotapalli area in Mancherial district in 2019. Some of the forest officials are said to be showing more interest in getting publicity for migration of more tigers into Telangana from bordering Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve of Maharashtra but actually it is a natural phenomenon due to high density of tiger population.
