3 days Ago
Zeenat is a 3-year-old tigress from Odisha’s Similipal Tiger Reserve (Mayurbhanj district) who embarked on an adventure that kept forest officials from three States on tenterhooks for nearly a month and made her a year-end media attraction. According to Prakash Chand Gogineni, Field Director of the Similipal Tiger Reserve and Regional Chief Conservator of Forests, Baripada, Zeenat left the reserve in the early hours of December 8 and made her way to Jharkhand and from there to West Bengal. She covered more than 200 km, giving both foresters and people living near forested areas sleepless nights.
More than 20 days later, on December 29, the elusive tiger was finally caught after repeatedly escaping apprehension in nylon nets, eluding tranquiliser darts, and making do with the occasional prey that came her way. According to officials, Zeenat was active and healthy after her apprehension. New territory Similipal was new territory for Zeenat, who, along with another tigress, Yamuna, was brought to Odisha from the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra on November 14 for a “genetic rescue”.
Kept in the “soft enclosure” for acclimatisation for 10 days, she was released in the core area of Similipal on November 24. “Similipal, being isolated, is facing loss of diversity, so..
. we are physically bringing in tigers from other regions so that genetic diversity will increase among Similipal tigers,” said Gogineni. According to him, the fact that Zeenat was transferred from her own territory could be one of the reasons why she strayed so far.
“When you transfer a tiger from its own territory to another location, there will be a ‘translocation shock’. Tigers generally do not move around beyond their territory. At the time of their translocation shock, for a few days they will roam around trying to adjust to the new area.
Also, the presence of local tigers may frighten the animal into leaving the area,”Gogineni told Frontline . These risks are inherent to the project, and forester officers regularly face them. “Generally, after moving out, the tiger returns after a short while.
The tigers are radio-collared, and we can keep track of their whereabouts, but this time, unexpectedly, the tigress moved a very long distance, so we had to follow it and tranquilise it. It was more convenient this time as the area into where it had strayed was not a heavily forested region,” Gogineni told Frontline . Yamuna, on the other hand, was apparently happy exploring the forest of Similipal and felt no need to go beyond.
Wandering about in Jharkhand, then West Bengal After leaving Odisha, Zeenat entered Jharkhand, where she wandered about before crossing over to Belpahari in West Bengal’s Jhargram district on December 20. The tigress was careful to avoid getting sighted, and a weak signal from her radio collar prevented her from being monitored for a while, much to the concern of foresters. On December 22, the occasional signals officials received revealed that she had entered Purulia district’s Bandwan forest area, indicating that she may have travelled over 50 km in two days.
Meanwhile, forest officials increased the number of teams tracking Zeenat, but the undulating, hilly terrain with dense forest cover in certain areas prevented a steady transmission of the signal from her collar and hampered the search. Also Read | Odisha government constitutes a task force to deal with the raging forest fires in the State, especially in the Similipal biosphere By December 23, she was observed approaching the border of the adjacent Bankura district, but she chose to remain in Purulia, feasting on goats belonging to nearby villages. From Bandwan forest, she moved to the Manbazar 2 range in the same district, where neither the nylon nets set up by forest officials nor darts nor live bait led to her capture.
On December 28, she added Bankura to her travel itinerary and was spotted in Gosaindihi in Bakura’s Ranibandh subdivision, where she was finally captured in the afternoon of December 29. Interestingly, not only was Zeenat able to avoid the tranquilizer darts that were aimed at her, she even managed to remove the ones that struck her. Mrityunjoy Biswas, a deputy ranger from the Sundarbans who was leading one of the teams that finally managed to administer a tranquilising dart, reportedly said that he had never encountered a tiger that could remove darts.
It was not always possible for Zeenat to find forest cover in the course of her journey, and she was seen crossing railway tracks, loping across an abandoned airstrip from the time of the Second World War, and skirting human habitations. With the holiday season in full swing and Zeenat wandering about in some popular holiday destinations in the forests of the three districts of West Bengal, forest officials were having to race against time but, at the same time, could not afford to proceed without patience and caution. “While it was important for us to catch the tigress as soon as possible for her safety as well as the safety of the people in the region, we could not hurry as that would be counterproductive and also dangerous,” a forest official told Frontline .
Incidentally, just the day before Zeenat entered West Bengal, a tiger attack claimed a life in the Sundarbans. Forest officials carry Zeenat after tranquilising her, in Bankura district of West Bengal on December 29, 2024. | Photo Credit: PTI Shy and intelligent Tapas Das, former Chief Conservator of Forests, West Bengal, and Field Director, Sundarbans Tiger Reserve, explained that tigers’ inherent shyness and intelligence made them difficult to catch.
“...
. It can catch the alien smell of humans in the traps that are set for it, and so remains on its guard. Moreover, .
.. one needs to be near a tiger to tranquilise it, and the tiger can sense the proximity of humans.
There was an incident in the Sundarbans where a tiger refused to enter the cage and chose to kill the bait from outside the cage. It had once been caught in a cage and was not about to fall into the same trap a second time. Man may be the most intelligent of animals, but tigers are not.
.. far behind,” Das told Frontline .
Also Read | The 21-day operation to capture tiger T23 While it is not possible to say with certainty what precipitated Zeenat’s long stroll across three States, according to Das, there can be a number of reasons: During the mating period, a newly adult tigress can move away because she feels intimidated by the males, or sometimes, an old tiger moves nearer human habitation in order to get easier prey like cattle. “But since this tigress is new here, I feel that she tried to demarcate her own territory and set out to survey the region..
.. [W]e know she has moved so far.
.. because she strayed into areas near human habitation; if it [had been] the jungle, we would not have even known that she had travelled so far,” Das told Frontline .
He also pointed out that since Zeenat was transferred from Maharashtra, where the surroundings are quite different from Similipal’s, she may have felt confused and needed to explore the new surroundings. “Maharashtra jungle is a dry, deciduous forest, whereas Simlipal is an evergreen forest. She may have felt confused and thus tried to explore the settings to understand it better.
From my own experiences as a forester, I do not think there was any other reason for her to stray,” said Das. CONTRIBUTE YOUR COMMENTS SHARE THIS STORY Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit.
