Kolkata/Jalpaiguri: The three-year-old, 150-kg tigress captured in Bihar’s Valmiki Tiger Reserve reached north Bengal’s Buxa Tiger Reserve on Wednesday morning, marking the first step in the ambitious tiger reintroduction programme.Sources said the tigress, on the verge of adulthood, left her mother’s territory in Valmiki’s Manguraha range less than a year ago. “She has no exposure to livestock killing or any conflict history. While she preyed on big herbivores, most of her kills in the wild were wild boars,” said a source.The tigress reached Hasimara air base from Gorakhpur on a C130 J Super Hercules military aircraft around 4.58 am. From there, she was brought to Buxa in an animal ambulance around 7 am. Following initial health checks, she was released into the 2.2-hectare enclosure, where, sources said, she was seen moving around and observing her surroundings.On Oct 2, the tigress is likely to be released into the wild. “This is called systematic hard release. The release of the tigress in the enclosure on Wednesday is also part of the hard release,” said a source.Fitted with a GPS-enabled radio collar, the tigress will be closely monitored once released into the wild to track not just where she moves but how she adapts to Buxa. The collar is expected to provide scientists with insights into her use of the landscape, movement patterns, hunting behaviour and eventual establishment of a home range.While field teams will track her movements towards human habitation and the Bhutan forests, a central monitoring team at Rajabhatkhawa will simultaneously track her location through data transmitted by the collar.Wildlife Institute of India senior scientist Ramesh Krishnamurthy said the collar would offer much more than location coordinates.“Using data from the radio collar, we will be able to track the tigress’s life on an hourly basis,” Krishnamurthy said, adding that the GPS-enabled collar has a satellite uplink and would be an important tool for post-release monitoring and protection.The system has already undergone testing and trial runs. Dense vegetation can absorb or distort signals, but this would not necessarily result in a complete loss of tracking, Krishnamurthy said.CM Suvendu Adhikari, Union forest minister Bhupender Yadav and state forest minister Manoj Oraon will attend the tiger-release event.
