We all have heard stories of Tigers in our childhood and we all know how fierce Tigers are but this story about a tiger will not scare you but rather develop sympathy for it. An adult male Royal Bengal Tiger has traveled around 2000 km in search of a potential mate & suitable territory to call his home. Usually male tigers do not travel more than 27 km & females more than 6 km to establish their own territories. The Tiger started his journey from Tadoba landscape of Maharashtra and reached the jungles of Odisha after crossing Chhattisgarh, Telangana & Andhra Pradesh. The divisional forest officer of Parlakhemundi forest, Odisha, Anand S told that the tiger was first seen in the forest in June 2023 and that the department was unsure of where he came from. Anand added “It kept alternating between Rayagada division of Odisha and Manyam division of Andhra Pradesh since then. In September, he entered Parlakhemundi forest division in September and that’s when villagers started talking about seeing a tiger.” According to the reports, the tiger is still roaming in the forest and hunting cows & other local pets. Anand also mentioned an incident in which the tiger attacked & dragged a cow from a shed. The owner of the cow was shocked to find the half eaten remains of his cattle because there has been no record of any tiger sighting in that area in the last 30 years. Anand said “we were a little skeptical whether it was a tiger or leopard. As Odisha was doing its own tiger census, we installed cameras and the camera captured the tiger’s photos thrice.” The forest department of Odisha sent those photos to the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in Dehradun for mapping. The tiger’s unique stripes pattern matched with a tiger previously photographed in the Bramhapuri forest division of Maharashtra, thus confirming that the tiger has traveled all the way from Maharashtra to Odisha. The forest officials said that this is the first time a tiger has traveled from Maharashtra to Odisha because it is very rare for a tiger to cross rivers, agricultural fields, roads & settlements. The forest officials say that the tiger may have come in search of a potential mate or a safe & suitable environment. There was no sign or news of the tiger attacking any humans on his journey. However, the Conservator of Forests department has deployed five teams of 35 members to alert people living in the surrounding areas and instruct them not to step out of their homes at night. According to the media reports, this is the second longest journey that a tiger has crossed in India. The longest journey taken by an Indian tiger was by a radio-collared tigress named TWLS-T1-C1 from Maharashtra's Tipeshwar wildlife sanctuary. The tracker data showed that she had traveled 3017 km in 13 months before the tracker’s battery died.

Tags

• tiger
• migration
• wild life
• animals

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