The presence of a tiger has been officially confirmed in the Sitanadi-Udanti Tiger Reserve of Chhattisgarh after a gap of two and a half years. Although tiger footprints had been detected earlier, it was only after eight days of persistent tracking that camera traps managed to capture images of the big cat. On Saturday night, a camera in the Arsikanhar Range clicked the tiger’s image, followed by another shot on Sunday evening showing it hunting a bull.
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Mr. Varun Jain (2017-batch IFS officer), Divisional Forest Officer of the Tiger Reserve, stated that the tiger’s presence has been verified, and photographs have been sent to the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, to identify its origin. Previous tiger entries were recorded from Madhya Pradesh in 2019 and from Telangana via Maharashtra in 2022.
The tiger’s return is being seen as a success of the forest department’s ongoing conservation efforts in the 1,852 sq km sanctuary. In the past 18 months, encroachments on 700 hectares of buffer zone land by 250 individuals were cleared. Anti-poaching operations have also been intensified against gangs from Odisha’s Nuapada and Nabarangpur districts.
For the first time during summer, the sanctuary administration filled eight major ponds in the core zone using solar-powered pumps, and over 1,000 small waterholes (jhirias) were developed in the tiger corridor. These efforts have created a favorable environment for wildlife, leading to the return of tigers and a decrease in human-animal conflict. The sanctuary now shows signs of a growing population of wild animals due to improved water availability and reduced encroachments.
