After 8 months, ST-13 released in Sariska

It was a home coming for ST-13, a male tiger at the Sariska Tiger Reserve (STR) that was ousted by ST- 6 that fathered the big cat over territorial supremacy for the last eight months.

After a number of failed attempts, the STR officials late on Monday succeeded to tranquilize ST-13, radio collar the animal and shift it back to the core area, a top state forest official said.

The tiger ST-13 is offspring of ST-6 and ST-2.

The task of relocation the tiger to the STR is challenging due to the difficult terrain of the Rajgarh, about 80km from the core area of the reserve, where ST-13 has strayed, said Sariska chief conservator of forest Govind Swaroop Bhardwaj.

“We successfully captured tiger ST-13 from Rajgarh forest area on Monday night,” he told Hindustan Times.

“After a number of failed attempts, we changed our strategy and used the concept of ‘chemical signalling’--spraying urine of a tigress brought from the Jaipur Zoo--to lure the tiger.”

The tigers in Sariska have been sourced from Ranthambore as the reserve lost all its tigers in 2005. The forest department had used the same strategy nine years back in 2008, when tigers were first translocated from Ranthambore to Sariska.

The then Sariska park manager and deputy conservator of forest Rajesh Gupta and director P Somshekhar had used urine of ST-2 to keep the tiger in the core area so that it did not stray out of the reserve.

The tiger was tranquillized and radio collared, and then shifted to Sariska for safety and the entire operation was conducted by the staff of STR under the leadership of Baljikari with the help of Dr Arvind Mathur, said Bhardwaj.

“The male tiger was roaming around in the Rajgarh forest area, which was posing a major threat as it was outside the protected core of the reserve.”

The STR officials, whoever, are still struggling to capture the injured tigress ST-9 for treatment.