Kanha Orphan Tigress Cub Shifted to Panna National Park

A six year old tigress orphan cub residing at Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh has now been trans-located to Panna National Park, adding to the cat numbers here.

The young tigress named T5 will now join one of her sisters at Panna National Park who had been trans-located from Kanha National Park to Panna National Park about eight months ago. The tigress is one of the three cubs of a tigress who had been killed during a fight with another tiger.

T5 had been trans-located from one park to the other by road and was under constant supervision of the wildlife veterinaries. Once brought to Panna National Park the tigress cub was released into the wild and its movements are being constantly monitored by forest officials at Panna Tiger Reserve with the help of signal emitted by a radio collar fitted around the cat.

According to officials who have monitored its sister, who has now completely adapted to its surroundings, it will take at least three months for the new resident to adapt to its surroundings and to do things on her own.

During the time of translocation, the tigress was tranquilized to travel the 450 kms distance from Kanha to Panna National Park, attached with a radio collar by wildlife specialist from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun and accompanied by wildlife doctors and officials of Kanha National Park to ensure it good health on the way by maintaining its physical parameters.

When the mother of T5 died, her two other siblings, her sister and her brother, the third of the three cubs, all the three cubs were housed in a special enclosure in Mukki range in Kanha to prevent them from becoming preys for other animals.

Normally the mother trains her cubs in the killing of prey, but if the mother happens to die before such an event, the cubs cannot be released in the wild and are sent to the zoos instead. In this case the two young tigresses had successfully developed their natural instinct of killing prey in the enclosure and were sent to National Parks and Tiger Reserves while the male cub was sent to Van Vihar National Park, which is a zoo located in the centre of Bhopal, capital of Madhya Pradesh.

Kanha National Park was set up in 1955 and Panna National Park in 1981. Some years back Panna National Park has lost its tiger population due to wide scale poaching, but effective management has helped to maintain and slowly increase its tiger population over the last few years.

While Kanha National Park has about 60 tigers as per the last 2011 tiger census, Panna National Park now has five adult tigers, one male, four females and six cubs.

Madhya Pradesh is known to be the state with the largest tiger population in India. The other important National Parks of the state are Bandhavgarh National Park and Pench National Park which is 95% in Madhya Pradesh and 5% in Maharashtra near Nagpur.

http://www.rang7.com/news/national-park/kanha-orphan-tigress-cub-shifted-panna-national-park-975.htm