Big cat sets new benchmark! Longest ever walk by Indian tiger found in Tipeshwar sanctuary

New Delhi, December 3: The longest ever walk by a tiger in India has been recorded in Maharashtra’s Tipeshwar wildlife sanctuary. The wild animal walked 1,300 kms over five months to set the unintended benchmark. 

 

 

 

Experts believe the two-and-a-half-year-old male is possibly in search of prey, territory or a mate. The tiger, which is fitted with a radio collar, left its home in a wildlife sanctuary in the western state of Maharashtra in June. It was then tracked travelling back and forth over farms, water and highways, and into a neighbouring state. So far, the tiger has come into conflict with humans only once, when it "accidentally injured" one person who was part of a group that entered a thicket under which it was resting.

The tiger, called C1, was one of three male cubs born to T1, a female tiger in Tipeshwar wildlife sanctuary, home to 10 tigers in Maharashtra state. He was fitted with a radio collar in February and continued to roam the forests until the onset of monsoon rains to ‘find a suitable area to settle’. The animal left the sanctuary at the end of June, and since then has travelled through seven districts in Maharashtra and the neighbouring state, Telangana. At the weekend, he was located in another wildlife sanctuary in Maharashtra.

 

 

 

Wildlife officials say the big cat has not travelled in a 'linear manner'. He is being tracked through GPS satellite information every hour and has been recorded in more than 5,000 locations in the past nine months. The tiger hid during the day and travelled in the night time, killing wild pigs and cattle for food.

 

 

According to the latest tiger estimation report for 2018 released in July this year, the country now has as many as 2,967 tigers in the wild, with more than half of them in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. The range for the total tiger population in the wild is 2,603-3,346. The population has increased by nearly 33% since the last census in 2014 when the total estimate was 2,226.

Maharashtra, at 312, has the fourth highest tiger population in the country, following Madhya Pradesh (526), Karnataka (524) and Uttarakhand (442).

The tiger bearing habitats are divided into five landscape regions -Shivalik-Gangetic plains, Central India and the Eastern Ghats, Western Ghats, North Eastern Hills and Brahmaputra Flood Plains and the Sundarbans.