Tiger cub radio collared in Panna reserve

Source: DNA | Last Updated 05:07(16/01/12) Bhopal: One out of the two cubs born to a translocated wild tigress T-1 in Panna tiger reserve one has been radio-collared for enabling its monitoring. This cub, 21-month-old, has been tagged as Panna-111. We are trying to radio-collar the other cub of T-1. Both cubs will be released into the wild shortly. Tagging will facilitate monitoring,” Panna field director RS Murthy told media. Big cats had been translocated from Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Pench national parks after Panna became devoid of tigers. So far, two felines have given birth to cubs boosting the efforts to revive tiger population. Although the Panna tiger reserve website boasts that it is one of the most famous tiger reserves”, in fact, the population of the big cats was reduced from 21 (in 1998) to 0 in less than a decade, as a result of poaching. Later, a male and two females from other areas of India were translocated to Panna in the hopes of rebuilding the tiger population from scratch with support of the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF). They were being monitored through radio collars and remote surveillance systems. The reserve flourished with tiger cubs in 2010, rejoicing the success of its translocation experiment. The tiger reserve has seven cubs and five adult tigers in its wild after the launch of an experiment involving breeding of translocated wild cats and rehabilitation of orphaned cubs. Kanha tiger reserve at present has 21-23 tiger cubs while the Pench tiger reserve boasts of having another 21 or more. Similarly, at Pench tiger reserve officials claim, nearly 21 tiger cubs were sighted by the forest staff in different zones of the reserve in 2010-2011. The last tiger census of Madhya Pradesh stood at 257 while in Karnataka the count was 300 following which the central state lost its coveted “Tiger State” status to the southern counterpart. http://daily.bhaskar.com/article/MP-BHO-tiger-cub-radio-collared-in-panna-reserve-2754933.html