Kolkata: If all goes well, north Bengal’s Buxa Tiger Reserve will get two tigers this Global Tiger Day — July 29.The big cats, in all likelihood two females, may be brought either from Assam’s Manas Tiger Reserve or Bihar’s Valmiki Tiger Reserve, senior govt officials in New Delhi told TOI on Friday.Soumitra Dasgupta, member of National Board for Wildlife, said: “The project may start with two female tigers. They will either be brought from Valmiki Tiger Reserve in Bihar or Manas Tiger Reserve in Assam. They will be introduced in Buxa on July 29.” Dasgupta, also a director of International Big Cat Alliance, was head of forest force in Bengal.Sanjay Kumar, member-secretary of National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), said: “Tentatively, we have set a target of July 29 to release tigers in Buxa. Talks are on to get the big cats from Bihar’s Valmiki or any reserve from the north-east landscape such as Manas, Kaziranga or Orang. Valmiki is a key ecological bridge that links the Gangetic Plains with the Himalayan Terai and parts of it resemble the nature of the forest in Buxa.“Union forest minister Bhupender Yadav announced on May 24 plans to “reintroduce” tigers in Buxa. With Buxa lacking a stable big cat population, a tiger augmentation project was launched in 2016-17, focusing on habitat improvement, enhancement of the prey base and relocation of forest villages. While Bhutia Basti and Gangutia villages have already been relocated, sources said relocation of Jayanti village recently gathered pace, with 97% of the 400-plus families showing interest in resettlement.Since 2021, camera traps in Buxa have captured images of tigers a few times.A source in the state forest department, though, said all details about the introduction of tigers will only become clear after they get the NTCA technical committee’s report.Manas and Buxa are in the same landscape — north-east hills and Brahmaputra floodplains — and are contiguous.Valmiki Tiger Reserve (VTR), as per reports in 2023, is nearing its carrying capacity. From just eight in 2010, the number there jumped to over 50 in 2023. “Valmiki had a low tiger count when an action plan was drawn up for it in 2016-17. Now, it’s close to 56. If it has crossed the capacity, it will be good to transfer excess tigers to other reserve forests in the country, where the tiger population is low. It is a part of wildlife management,” Kumar said.On Jayanti relocation, a senior forester said of the 445 families, only 10-12 had problems in relocating. “A family consists of a person, his or her spouse, minor sons, and unmarried daughters. Once a son in the family attains the legal age of majority (18 years) prior to the relocation cut-off date, he may be recognised as a separate family unit,” he said.Bengal’s former chief wildlife warden, Pradeep Vyas, under whose tenure the tiger augmentation project had got the Centre’s in-principle nod in 2016-17, had said there were plans to relocate two tigers to Buxa every three years till 2026 keeping its sink zones in mind, including the forests of Bhutan and Assam and north Bengal’s Jaldapara. “This is a landscape in a whole, which tigers use to migrate in search of food, mates and territory,” he had said.
