Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar |A young male tiger has travelled 450 km from Vidarbha to make his home in Yedshi Ramling Ghat Wildlife Sanctuary, a modest jungle in Maharashtra's Dharashiv district that had not seen a big cat settling in decades.
Talking to PTI, a forest official said the wandering big cat, aged around three years, made the long journey from Tipeshwar in Vidarbha and marked his territory in the small sanctuary area in December last year.
Spread across 22.50 sq km, Yedshi Ramling was developed as a sanctuary in 1997 and is home to leopards, sloth bears, jackals, wolves, monitor lizards, barking deer and hares, apart from 100 species of birds, Range Forest officer Amol Munde told PTI.
Locally, forest staff refer to the tiger as ‘Ramling’, naming him after the famous temple of Lord Shiva in the vicinity, Munde said.
"The tiger was first spotted in December last year. Wildlife experts studied the case and concluded that he had travelled from Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in Yavatmal. Camera trap images taken in Yedshi were matched with earlier photographs from Tipeshwar, confirming the animal’s identity and origin," he said.
During his 450-km journey, the big cat wandered into Adilabad in neighbouring Telangana, and entered Nanded and Ahmedpur before reaching the Yedshi Ramling Ghat Wildlife Sanctuary, the official said.
The tiger also keeps venturing into areas adjacent to the sanctuary, which is comparatively small.
"Our Yedshi Ramling Ghat Wildlife Sanctuary is small, covering an area of 22.50 sq km, just one fourth of the required space, so the big cat wanders to Barshi, Bhum, Tuljapur and Dharashiv talukas. However, he hasn't attacked any humans so far," Munde said.
The forest department had earlier attempted to rescue the tiger to fit a collar and shift him to the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve and launched a 75-day operation from January to April, but did not succeed, he said.
The tiger vanished into the landscape, surfacing only a handful of times during the entire operation, he said.
"Drones were used to track him, but he was spotted just two or three times during the entire operation. This young tiger is skilled enough to conceal himself," the official said.
The presence of prey such as wild boars, sambar deer, nilgais and chinkaras has made his stay comfortable, he said.
"In the beginning, the big cat did kill cattle, but since April, he has defined his area to hunt for prey. He moves in the mornings and makes a rare appearance in the early hours," Munde said.
The official said that the young big cat is the fourth tiger to arrive in Marathwada since 1971.
Munde said the last confirmed tiger presence in the region was in 1971 in Gautala Wildlife Sanctuary, and it wasn’t until 2020 that another tiger briefly appeared in Gautala again. Currently, two other big cats are shuttling between Nanded in Marathwada and Tipeshwar in Vidarbha.
The tiger's presence in Yedshi Sanctuary is an indicator of a healthy jungle, the official said.
"The big cat has no challenges apart from public movement and low-intensity electric fences put up by farmers to protect crops. We have formed patrol teams that keep monitoring his location," he said.
