The elusive tiger, for which a search operation involving elephants and a drone was under way, was found dead near Nittur village in Thithimathi territorial range of Kodagu district on Sunday morning.
The male tiger, around 9 to 10 years, had sustained wounds on its face and body in a territorial fight with the dominant male, which had ejected it from its domain. The tiger had stalked cattle in the villages close to Nagarahole National Park boundary, and had attacked a coffee estate worker on Friday, following which a search operation was launched to trap it.
Conservator of Forest Manoj Kumar told The Hindu that the tiger had tried to hunt a porcupine which may have hastened its death. But the post-mortem report indicated that the territorial fight was the main reason for death. Its right eye had been gouged out and a deep wound on the face was infested with maggots. Three days of intensive land and aerial search and combing operations had not yielded results.
The combing operations covered more than 15 sq km of forest area along the Anechokur-Kalalla border abutting Lakshmana Tirtha river close to Nittur village.
Conflict situation
This is the fifth tiger death in the last three weeks in the Nagarahole-Bandipur range and the fourth in the Nagarahole range alone. The 2014 country-wide tiger estimation results pegged the tiger population in Karnataka at 406, with the Bandipur-Nagarahole landscape accounting for about 200 to 220 tigers.
But, with nearly 117 villages surrounding Nagarahole and 150 villages around Bandipur, the conflict situation tends to escalate when old tigers are ejected from their territory and enter the periphery to stalk cattle and come into conflict with humans.
