"The incident is extremely tragic as well as an eye-opener after the electrocution of two tigers in the recent past in Tadoba landscape," said Praveen Pardeshi, principal secretary (forests). He said a red alert has been sounded around Tadoba, Melghat, Bor, Nagzira and Navegaon. After discussions with National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and senior forest officials, preventive steps to trace more traps in the periphery of these PAs have been announced.
Directions have been issued to the staff to keep track of all water holes, particularly on the periphery of protected areas for traps on a daily basis. "Nagzira and Bor also need to be on high alert, with daily scanning of every waterhole and keeping track of tigers outside the parks," Pardeshi said.
As per the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), the latest poaching may be the handiwork of the gang involved in poaching near Tadoba in 2010. The pictures of those two culprits are already available with the forest department and Nitin Desai, Central India director of WPSI.
Pardeshi has also directed recruitment of 90 forest guards under Special Tiger Protection Force (STPF) approved by the government for TATR. These guards will be put under the field director and posted in buffer zone for patrolling. Read the full report here.
Source: Vijay Pinjarkar, TNN, Nagpur.
