T-24 not a maneater, bring him back to the wild: NTCA to state govt

Also read – Big Picture: The debate on Ranthambore’s ‘man-eater’ Ustad aka T24

“T-24 may not (qualify to) be described as a maneater…rather such incidents may be more closely described as consequences of chance encounters due to excessive human proximity to tiger,” the NTCA has said in its report on the translocation of T-24, aka Ustaad.

In the report — a copy of which is with The Sunday Express — the authority has taken the state forest department to task for not keeping it in the loop and proceeding with translocation without its prior permission.

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All that the NTCA received from the Ranthambore National Park authorities was a text message on May 8, which said: “Today at 4 pm, a local forest guard, Rampal Mali, has been attacked by tiger near the entrance of park and the detailed report will be sent shortly”.

In response, the authority sought details of the incident on an urgent basis. “However…neither written approval from NTCA was obtained by state government…nor any report was submitted to NTCA regarding capture and relocation of the tiger,” the report notes.

The first formal report on translocation reached NTCA nine days after the tiger hadbeen transferred to the Sajjangarh zoo in Udaipur. Tiger T-24 was shifted out from Ranthambore tiger reserve on May 16 after the reserve declared it a maneater for killing a forest guard.

The order issued by the Chief Wildlife Warden said, the NTCA report did not state reasons for the tiger being translocated to a zoo. “The order does not speak about the reasons the CWW had considered in arriving at the conclusion as to why T-24 cannot be rehabilitated in the wild as required under Section 11 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972,” the report says.

“The report is damning and the state government now needs to answer and act against the erring officials,” said wildlife activist Rupesh Vyas.

The NTCA has also called for regulation of tourism and developing a master plan to faciliatate movement of pilgrims through the reserve, failing which tigers would be increasingly vulnerable to threat of conflicts with humans. It has also noted that the staff at Ranthambore required “training in many domains related to tourism and skills on field craft in wildlife science”.

However, forest minister Raj Kumar Rinwa said the NTCA was duly informed of the translocation. “I was told that they were informed. And why did they not raise  these issues earlier?” he asked. “The B P Singh committee that we had set up will submit its report in four-five days. We will take a call based on that,” he said.