A tiger and a tigress, found dead in the Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR) in Coimbatore on Wednesday, may have been poisoned, officials have said.
A group of forest officials attached to ATR and veterinarians found a poison-laced carcass of a wild boar near those of the two carnivores on Thursday.
Remains of the boar were also found inside the stomachs of the tiger and the tigress, both aged around 10, during the post-mortem that was performed as per the protocol of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) on Thursday. The animals were found dead in the Pothamadai forest beat, falling under the Pollachi forest range of ATR.
Forest Department staff found the carcass of the tigress on the bed of a stream just outside the forest area on Wednesday afternoon.
They later found the remains of a tiger at another location along the stream, less than a kilometre away. Both carcasses were at least three days old.
Veterinarians autopsied the carcasses in the presence of Additional Principal Conservator of Forests Debasis Jana (also Chief Conservator of Forests, Coimbatore circle, and in charge as Field Director of ATR) and Arockiaraj Xavier, Deputy Field Director of ATR, on Thursday morning, in the presence of Sankararaman from NTCA and representatives of NGOs.
They ensured that parts of the two big cats, such as teeth and claws, were intact.
Samples were collected from the two carcasses for examination at a laboratory.
Mr. Jana said the department had ruled out the possibility of poaching.
“Going by prima facie evidence, we suspect that the tiger and the tigress had been together during the mating period and had ingested the flesh from the wild boar’s carcass, which contained poison,” he said.
K. Kalidasan of the NGO Osai, also a former member of the Tamil Nadu State Board for Wildlife, who was present during the autopsies, said the carcass of the wild boar was found very close to a farm.
In the NTCA’s Management Effectiveness Evaluation (MEE) Report of Tiger Reserves, 2018, the ATR, with a core area of 958.59 sq km, was ranked fourth among the 50 tiger reserves in the country, with an MEE rating of 89.06%.
