PILIBHIT: Forest authorities in Pilibhit are set to tranquillize a stray tigress that has ventured out from the Deuria forest range of the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve (PTR) and strayed to Mataina village, under the jurisdiction of the Puranpur Kotwali police station.
The tigress has been in the village for a week, covering a cropped stretch of 2 to 3 kilometres, raising concerns for the safety of local farmers.
The divisional forest officer (DFO) of PTR, Naveen Khandelwal and his counterpart in the forest and wildlife division, Sanjeev Kumar, have put the field forest force on high alert as a 5- to 6-year-old tigress was brutally beaten to death by villagers of the same village on July 24, 2019, after she had killed a 19-year-old youth, Shyam Mohan.
The incident occurred inside the core forest area of the Deuria forest range, which shares an interface with Mataina. According to Khandelwal and Kumar, the chief wildlife warden of the state, Anjani Kumar Acharya, has granted permission to tranquillize the tigress.
"We initiated the operation to tranquillize the tigress on Saturday, but she changed her location. Our field forest teams are closely monitoring her, and as soon as we have suitable visibility, we will tranquillize her for relocation to another forest region," Kumar said.
To ensure both the tigress's safety and favourable conditions for the operation, the range officer at the Purnapur circle, Shyam Lal Yadav, reported that the tigress's current location has been encircled on three sides with nets.
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