The two tigresses that arrived from Pench National Reserve have not been around humans for eight years; they will be trained to follow commands
Like a 60-hour tiring journey was not enough, two tigresses brought from Pench Tiger Reserve to Sanjay Gandhi National Park, will now be kept in isolation for three months. But this is for their survival in the national park as these big cats are alien to human beings since they haven’t been in their presence for the last eight years.
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The tigresses, who were earlier living in a three-hectare area, are facing a space crunch in SGNP, where they have been put in 15X10 ft enclosures
This poses a big challenge for the SGNP authorities as they will have to train these eight-year-old tigresses to be accustomed to human presence and listen to their commands. Since the first training move was to isolate them, they have been kept in two separate enclosures, which are 15X10 ft — a far cry from the 3 hectares they were used to in Pench.
“We are not letting people close to the animals, named TF1 and TF2, as they got aggressive on seeing humans. We don’t want to stress the animals and so we will allow them to settle in while they live in isolation for a minimum of three months. Once they are comfortable around humans, we would train them to follow commands. When they are prepared, we will decide if they should be released in the safari or not,” said SGNP veterinary officer, Dr Shailesh Pethe.
Since the animals have been brought here for breeding, they are undergoing medical check-ups.
Tiring journey
The tigresses set out on a 950-km road journey on Friday evening and they reached SGNP in the early hours of Monday. They were brought in a rescue van that was escorted by two other forest department vehicles.
“Getting the tigers to Mumbai from Pench via road was not an easy task as we had to plan the entire journey, including the locations where we would halt. Our main motive was to see to it that the animals are comfortable and so all the vehicles never crossed the speed limit of 60 km per hour,” said Range Forest Officer (RFO) Shailesh Deore.
In order to avoid trouble while travelling, the animals were kept on a fasting diet for two days before leaving from Pench. “During the journey, every four to five hours, we were monitoring the animals. Also, we kept water in their enclosures to keep them hydrated,” added Pethe.
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