Jaipur, July 9 (IANS) Two tigers will be relocated from the Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan’s Sawai Madhopur district to Sariska Tiger Reserve in Alwar, an official said.
‘A team of experts visited Sariska recently to oversee the arrangements for relocating the tigers,’ the senior official of the Rajasthan forest department told IANS.
He said the tigers – a male and a female – will be relocated ‘sometime next week’.
The official said it was quite likely that the tiger would be brought first and the tigress after a few days.
Three tigers have already been relocated to Sariska. The first male tiger was airlifted in June 2008, which was followed by the relocation of two more female tigers.
The Sariska Tiger Reserve in Alwar district, over 110 km from here, is India’s most famous tiger sanctuary and is at the centre of the Project Tiger conservation programme.
Originally a hunting preserve of the erstwhile Alwar state, Sariska was declared a wildlife reserve in 1955. In 1978, it was declared a tiger reserve.
The forest department and the state government few years back had faced criticism from political and non-political quarters on the disappearance of tigers from Sariska.
A report in March 2005 by the Wildlife Institute of India confirmed that there were indeed no tigers left in the Sariska Tiger Reserve.
