Following three or four months of continuous efforts to apprehend the tiger, which had traveled roughly 500 kilometers from Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in Yavatmal (southwest of Nagpur) to reach the districts of Solapur and Dharashiv, the operation has now been temporarily halted due to the tiger’s continued evasiveness. Officials from the forest department have made the decision to keep an eye on its activities for the time being by utilizing video traps and routine patrols.

In December of the previous year, the tiger had reached Dharashiv. “While monitoring the tiger’s activity, we observed that it is not frequently returning to the kill site, so we have suspended the operation to capture the tiger,” said a senior forest department officer engaged in the operation. Nonetheless, our crew is patrolling the region where the tiger is situated, and we are constantly monitoring its movements with video traps. The tiger enters and exits the woodland. In addition to preying on wild animals inside the forest, the tiger has killed very few livestock outside of it in the last month.

The personnel of the forest department have made sure that all of the artificial water holes in the forest, where the tiger is traveling, are filled since it is the height of summer. To avoid any unfavorable encounters between humans and tigers, awareness campaigns are also being held close to human settlements.

The Maharashtra Forest Department made the decision to catch the tiger and release it into the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve, which is 300 kilometers from Mumbai and spans the districts of Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur, and Ratnagiri, during the second week of January. The Pune-based NGO RESQ Charitable Trust and the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve’s Rapid Rescue Team had previously done all in their power to apprehend the tiger.

However, the operation was quite complex because to the rugged terrain and the big cat’s elusiveness. The tiger has been wandering along the border between the districts of Dharashiv and Solapur.

The darting crew had to wait for long stretches of time since, according to earlier reports, the tiger had been killing but was not going back to the death sites for three or four days. To keep an eye on the tiger’s movements, ten to twelve live CCTV cameras are now in operation in the field.

The male tiger was born in 2022 in Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary and is the cub of tigress T22, according to experts. A number of farmers in the Solapur area reported an increase in cow assaults to forest authorities in January. After that, the department set up camera traps, which allowed them to take pictures of the male tiger. This is reportedly the first time a tiger has been seen in the Yedshi Ramalinga Wildlife Sanctuary in the Marathwada region of Dharashiv.

It is thought that the male tiger, who is now about 2.5 years old, left its birthplace in pursuit of a new one. It has been alternating between the districts of Dharashiv and Solapur. Born in Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in 2022 to tigress T22, this young male tiger has been roaming about looking for new territory.