Maharashtra tiger deaths: Male tiger found dead in Melghat reserve, taking toll of big cats to four in one week

A tiger was found dead in Maharashtra’s Melghat Tiger Reserve in Amravati district on Saturday, taking the toll up to four tiger deaths in the past six days. The reason for death has not been ascertained yet.

The carcass was found near Motha village under the East Melghat Division. The male tiger had been dead for 10 days, “indicating that no patrolling was done in the area”, The Times of India reported, quoting sources. “It was only due to fire-line works that the carcass was traced.”

Authorities have ruled out poaching on a prima facie basis, saying that the tiger died due to old age, the report added.

The big cat’s death in Melghat comes within a week of two deaths in the state’s Umred-Karhandla-Paoni Wildlife Sanctuary in Nagpur. The Maharashtra forest department suspects that the deaths may have been due to poisoning, after officials found a half-eaten carcass of a wild pig near one of the tigers.

Forest officials confirmed that both tigers, seven-year-olds Charger and Raai, had eaten the meat of the same wild boar, the  Hindustan Times reported.

Pench Tiger Reserve field director Ravikiran Govekar said: “Along with the dead tigress, we found a semi-eaten carcass of a wild pig near the second carcass, which indicates that this might have been a case of revenge killing by villagers from within the sanctuary. There are farmlands in close vicinity to the spot, and revenge killing is not new here.

“Prima facie, it seems the wild pig was poisoned, killed and left out as bait, and the physiological changes on the tigers’ carcass indicate poisoning. However, a toxicology test will confirm our suspicion, and the process is underway,” he said.

National Tiger Conservation Authority figures show that around 92 tiger deaths took place in 2018, with Maharashtra ranking second with 20 deaths, after Madhya Pradesh which recorded 23 deaths.

This comes on the heels of the Maharashtra government coming under fire after the killing of tigress Avni. She was  shot dead by forest rangers in November. Her death had drawn massive flak from animal rights activists over the manner in which she was killed by forest rangers and hunters.

Tigress Avni, who was believed to be responsible for the death of at least 13 people in the past two years in the forests of Yavatmal, was gunned down by sharp-shooter Asgar Ali in the district in Maharashtra on 2 November last year. This was after a three-month hunt by around 150 ground personnel, elephants and so-called expert trackers and shooters.

On 4 September, the Maharashtra forest department had issued a shoot on sight order for Avni, claiming that the six-year-old tigress, along with two of her cubs, had consumed 60 percent of a human corpse, which led to the decision to declare her a “man-eater”. The decision to kill Avni, however, had generated a flurry of online petitions.

In the last week of December, officials captured one of Avni’s two orphaned cubs. A joint team of officials from the Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh forest departments managed to tranquilise and capture the female cub in the Anji forest in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district. Sunil Limye, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife East) in Nagpur had said the cub would be sent to the Pench national park in Madhya Pradesh.

With inputs from agencies