Only 1 of 3 hand-reared tigers should be released in Pench, says expert panel

The Forest Department had been mulling their release into the wild and sought the opinion of National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA). The NTCA had appointed a three-member panel comprising R S Govekar, NTCA’s central India official, Parag Nigam and Bilal Habib, scientists from the Wildlife Institute of India.

In a report submitted recently, the panel recommended that only one of the females was fit to be released into the wild while the other two, a male and a female, were not ready on account of the prohibitive degree of human imprint they betray in their behavior.

Human imprint is the measure of a tiger’s dependence on humans for food and to what extent they are used to the movement of a human around them. A higher human imprint means the tigers are likelier to follow humans and come close to human settlements, causing problems.

The human imprint was caused by the Forest Department staffers who fed them during infancy, and continued to do so till much later. It was only recently that they were kept in larger enclosures where live animals were released so they could learn to hunt. But experts noted that the method of providing the feed, which included a truck coming close to the enclosures, made the animals used to particular noises and human movement.

“The female in the bigger enclosure has minimal human imprinting and seems to be appropriate for release into the wild on an experimental basis with a radio collar with VHF option,” the panel noted, advising 24×7 post-release monitoring for at least a year.

“A team of officials and frontline staff should be sent to Panna and Sariska tiger reserves for training in such monitoring,” the committee added.

The Forest Department has decided to soft-release the female in a selected area in Pench, while continuing to hold the other two in enclosures.

Earlier, it was planned that one of the captive females be released in Navegaon-Nagzira Tiger Reserve in Gondia district where male tigers were found to be looking for females because of a seemingly skewed sex ratio. “We have now decided not to do that. That NNTR has a skewed male-female ratio is a matter of speculation,”said a senior official.