A tiger reserve in Telangana without a single big cat

HYDERABAD: For the second time in a decade, Kawal Tiger Reserve, one of the two such sanctuaries in Telangana, has gone “tigerless” with forest department officials having no clue about what happened to the two big cats that had migrated from the forests in Maharashtra in 2015.

After barely a year in the reserve, the tigers — a male and a female — went missing around November last year.

The two migrant tigers had raised hopes for the reserve which had last recorded the presence of big cats in 2012. There were, however, some unconfirmed reports of the presence of a tiger in 2013.


A large portion of the 2,015 sq km Kawal Tiger Reserve falls in Adilabad, forest minister Jogu Ramanna’s Assembly constituency. Despite this, several tracts of the forest have been encroached upon with the government not taking any steps to clear them, said sources. It is also reliably learnt that the reserve is one of the areas where people continue to lay electrified wire traps to kill wild animals.

The reserve’s field director, C Saravanan, when asked about the missing tigers, said it was possible that the tigers returned to where they came from due to cattle and human disturbances. However, conservationists working in the area for the past many years were dismissive of the “tigers returned home” theory.

“They are not like some species of birds that migrate every year. Tigers move in search of new territories.. they come into Telangana because of overcrowding in the tiger reserves in Maharashtra,” one of them said.

This is not the first time that tigers have gone missing from the erstwhile unified Adilabad district. Since 1996, 18 tigers disappeared from the district, sources said.