Man-eater tiger of Pancharakolli leaves behind a mystery, no records on database
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Wayanad: Almost a week after the man-eater tiger of Pancharakolli was found dead behind a house near the forest, the officials are still clueless to the question where the animal came from.
The tiger had killed Radha, a female labourer, while she was on the way to a farm for coffee bean harvest and partially devoured her. The images of the 7-year-old female tiger were captured by the camera traps installed by the forest department in the jungle soon after the killing of the woman.
The officials found out that the animal was not registered in any database, either by the state forest department or the National Tiger Conservation Authority.
It is now assumed that the animal entered Kerala via Karnataka forests and managed to evade camera traps. The tiger's absence from the database need not be a cause for embarrassment, said Chief Forest Veterinary Officer Dr Arun Zachariah. "Only 80 per cent of the animals are found in the database while the 20 per cent are left out," he said.
Arun Zachariah also said that the animal was not only incapacitated but also was a man-eater. "She was a clear man-eater as she had pounced on the woman and Beat Forest Officer Jayasoorya, from behind. We don't know about its antecedents, but from its behaviour, it is clear that the animal was a man-eater," he said.
Experts believe that the depletion of prey animals in the jungle resulted in the tiger's migration to Wayanad and also turned her into a man-eater. The population of deer and wild buffalo is fast vanishing in the Wayanad forests.
According to the forest department data, there are only 84 tigers in the Wayanad region, including Aralam, and there has been a dip in the number of tigers since 2018. Wildlife experts pointed out that the drop might have resulted in the expulsion of the aged ones from the jungle during the fight for territory.
The young and mighty ones may push out the old and aged to the margins and finally onto the plantations outside the forest where they could either feed on prey animals like deer or catch domesticated cattle and sheep. These animals that roam outside the forest may not find their way into the census data.