A tigress relocated to a wildlife reserve in eastern India has escaped from its enclosure for a second time, digging beneath a perimeter fence just days after being captured and brought back from neighbouring Assam.
The three-year-old tigress known as Dooars Rani escaped from a 2.2-hectare enclosure at Buxa Tiger Reserve in West Bengal’s Alipurduar district on Sunday evening, according to forest officials.
It reportedly dug beneath the enclosure’s concrete foundation to get out. Officials have been using its radio collar to track its movements since its absence was noticed at around 2pm local time on Sunday.
West Bengal forest minister Manoj Kumar Oraon visited the enclosure on Monday and said officials had been surprised by the tigress’s ability to find a way out.
“Yesterday evening, the tigress managed to escape from the enclosure. We were surprised to see how intelligently it created a safe passage by digging underneath the fencing. We had planned to release the tigress into the wild in a couple of days,” Mr Oraon said.
He described the animal as the “Queen of the Dooars”, referring to the forested region of northern West Bengal.
The central government has recently introduced a tigress, T-138, into Buxa Tiger Reserve west bangal. As soon as the tigress came out of the enclosure, she moved towards Assam, passing through human settlements while hunting domestic pigs and wild boars, and reached the corridor… pic.twitter.com/m8ZuPtjWV7
“After all, she is the Queen of the Dooars – can she really be kept confined in an enclosure?” he said.
Officials believe the tigress is within five to seven kilometres of the enclosure. It was last spotted near a stream connected to the Jayanti river.
Around 60 forest personnel and three trained elephants have been deployed to track it. Authorities are concerned that it could cross the Sankosh river and return to Assam.
A commendable example of inter-state coordination and collective commitment to wildlife conservation!
BT1, the tigress from West Bengal’s Buxa Tiger Reserve, has been safely captured in Assam following a coordinated operation involving forest teams from West Bengal and BTR,… pic.twitter.com/YUlWOLIBeO
“Our teams are keeping the tigress under close observation and continuously tracking its movements. We will take all possible efforts to ensure that it does not move towards Assam again,” the minister added.
Dooars Rani was brought back to Buxa on 3 November after spending nearly 10 days in Assam’s forests.
It was originally brought from Bihar’s Valmiki Tiger Reserve as part of West Bengal’s first tiger relocation programme and released into Buxa on 2 October to help restore the reserve’s tiger population.
Doaars Rani has escaped again!
Five days after she was tracked from the Buxa Tiger Reserve to Assam, and brought back ..
Now she DUG A TUNNEL under the enclosure boundary and escaped! She’s being tracked thru radio collar and remains in Buxa, for now.
She was brought here from… pic.twitter.com/vzSt7rVB1p
But on 24 October, it travelled more than 100km to Assam’s Raimona Tiger Reserve. Forest officials from both states later tranquillised and captured it near Gilaguri in the Dotma area of Kokrajhar district on 3 November.
After its return, the tigress was placed in an enclosure to acclimatise before its planned release into the wild.
Officials said it had repeatedly tried to breach the fencing before its latest escape. They believe its time roaming freely in Assam may have made it reluctant to remain confined.
Buxa covers more than 760 sq km and was once an important tiger habitat. But habitat degradation, changes in land use and declining prey availability have affected its ability to sustain a resident tiger population.
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