Attempts to reunite tiger cub with mother put on hold in Chandrapur

Nagpur/Chandrapur: Efforts to reunite a rescued tiger cub with its mother in Chandrapur have come a cropper despite serious attempts by the forest officials.
On Tuesday there were reports that the reunion has been called off as mother failed to take away the cub. This is perhaps first such attempt to reunite a tiger cub with its mother in the wild.
State’s chief wildlife warden Nitin H Kakodkar told TOI, “The cub’s reunion effort has not been called off but put on hold to relieve stress.Continuous rain in the area is another reason.”
Two months ago then three-month-old cub was rescued by foresters from Sushi Dabgaon in Chichpalli range. The cub was found abandoned near a cattle shed by the villagers on April 24 morning.
“Our staff tried to reunite the cub by taking it to the spot for three consecutive days post capture but was unsuccessful as mother did not turn up. Camera trap survey showed there were two tigresses in the area - one with two cubs and another with three. Hence, it made reunion a bit risky. We went for DNA analysis from Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, to ascertain which one was cub’s mother,” says SV Ramarao, CCF of Chandrapur.
According to sources, a camera trap survey of two forest compartments found four tigresses in the area, two with cubs, and a male tiger too.
Divisional forest officer (DFO) AL Sonkusre said, “On the night of June 18 and 19 and morning of 20, we attempted to reunite the cub by deploying a trap cage near a water body where the mother of the cub frequented.”
“Hopes of reunion went up when on June 18 night, around 12.30am, cub and mother exchanged calls for more than 20 minutes. We saw the mother tigress 50 metres from the cage where she had killed the bait. However, she did not come near the cage and the motherhood feeling was missing. We were there for more than 48 hours but as the cub was under stress, we gave up and brought the cub to transit treatment centre (TTC) on June 20 morning,” said Sonkusre.
“We took all precautions and forest team that conducted the operation had donned PPE kits owing to Covid-19 scare. On June 20, morning we found the cub had not consumed chicken kept in the cage and was under severe stress. Secondly, due to rains we have taken a break for few days but will make one more attempt,” said Sonkusre.
Wildlife experts said, “Being a maiden attempt one cannot predict behaviour of the tigers in such situations. One of the reasons mother did not accept the cub is time lag. Two months have passed, which is a long time. The forest department has done many successful reunions of leopards when done within eight days.”
Wildlife conservationist Prafulla Bhamburkar said, “It is possible the mother may not have come to take the cub as it was in a cage.”