Airlifting of third tiger to Sariska deferred

New Delhi, Nov 5 (UNI) The plan to re-introduce the third tiger to Sariska Forests from the Ranthambhore wildlife sanctuary has been deferred for some time as the animal identified could not be tranquilised to facilitate its transportation.

Wildlife officials said a tigress had been picked up for being shifted to Sariska to join one pair already translocated there about three months ago.

The decision to reintroduce tigers to Sariska was taken after it was discoverd about four years ago that no tigers were left in the sanctuary.

Since Ranthambhore was experiencing a boom in the tiger population, it was decided to shift a few of them to Sariska, and in June and July one male tiger and a tigress were brought there, in a first experience of its kind in the country.

Now the third animal was slated to be airlifted to Sariska on November three, but the animal identified could not be located to be tranquilised.

''In fact we do not want to disturb the core population of Ranthambhore, so we decided to pick the ones from the dispersing population, hence the difficulty in locating them as they move in a very large area,'' a senior official of the Ministry of Environment and Forests told UNI.

Mr Som Shekhar, field officer, Sariska, said over phone that the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) team and officails of the Tiger Conservation Authority today decided to defer the operation for sometime, so that the animal identified for relocation could be tranquilised.

UNI NAZ SLD CS1740