It is celebration time at the Sariska Tiger Reserve. After two cubs were spotted at the Reserve this month, another tigress is believed to be pregnant.
“Some biological and physical changes in the tigress indicate that she is possibly pregnant,” Sunayan Sharma, former Director of the Sariska Tiger Reserve, told The Hindu here on Saturday.
At present, the Reserve has seven adults, including three males and four females, and four cubs. Two cubs were born in January 2013 while another two sometime earlier this month.
Tiger births are always celebrated in Sariska after its entire tiger population was wiped out in 2004. The government translocated a male and a female to Sariska from Ranthambore in 2008. After that several more were shifted, though one male was killed — it is believed to have been poisoned by poachers.
The first female tiger brought here in 2008 gave birth to two cubs in June 2012 and two more this month.
The tigers were brought here on the recommendation of a Task Force, set up under the chairmanship of V.P. Singh in 2005 under the Tiger Recovery Plan, said Dr. Sharma who now runs an organisation by the name of Sariska Tiger Foundation.