Villagers worried over tiger visits to villages as streams in forests dry up

KOMARAM BHEEM ASIFABAD: Villagers of interior areas in Bejjur and Penchikalpet mandals are worried over the rise in temperature following the gradual onset of the summer. With streams in the forests getting dry, tiger from the wild may come to the villages in search of water.

Already, a tiger is moving on the outskirts of villages and killing cattle. Incidents of human animal-conflict are common during the summer when those from the wild walk up to villages in the periphery for water to quench their thirst.

There are water bodies the villagers as also animals depend on during the summer.

Inhabitants of some villages are frequently sighting the tiger and they retreat to save their life. Villagers of Digida in Dahegoan mandal say there were incidents wherein the tiger came too close to the villages and killed cattle. Later, it killed one villager each in two separate incidents late last year.

People of interior villages say that the officials are not taking a serious view of incidents of tigers attacking humans. More human deaths could occur if no preventive steps are taken, they say.

Forest officials say chances of such attacks are less now. With cotton-picking activity ending for this season, farmers stay back at their homes, unlike in the beginning of the Kharif season.

The tiger involved in the killing of two persons was freely moving in the area and crossing the rivulets and River Penganga to reach back to its base in Maharashtra and then coming back after a span of a few days.

A villager in Digida said this could be the silence before the storm as far as the tiger-movement is concerned.