The tiger which mauled a man from a tribal community in the Maddur range of Bandipur last week, continues to elude forest officials who have continued with their combing operations. The operations, with assistance from elephants, will continue on Thursday, and a senior official from National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) Rajesh Gopal held extensive interaction with the officials and staff of Bandipur Tiger Reserve on Wednesday.
The visiting team has given clear instructions to the local authorities to continue with the combing operations to trap the elusive man-eating tiger but with a caveat that it should be trapped only after ascertaining that it indeed was responsible for mauling the tribal man.
Conservation activists pointed out that the Forest Department staff have a tough task cut out for them. They will have to go through the motions of combing the area to keep the local community mollified.
They argued that as the tiger attack took place inside the jungles, there was no way to ascertain the identity of the tiger. “In the case of the tiger which was trapped and tranquilised at Chikkabargi, the animal lived on the fringes as it was clearly injured and preyed on human beings outside the national park boundaries. But at Maddur, the incident took place inside the forests which was the natural habitat of the tigers”, they added.
The area of combing operations has been further expanded by installing 15 cameras which may help capture additional images. But this may cause confusion as the images could be those of other tigers in the vicinity. However, officials said that they are trying to ascertain through the images whether there was any injured tiger in the area, as an injury acts as a contributory factor to them preying on human beings.
