A tiger and a tigress were, on Friday, released into enclosures at the Madhav National Park (MNP) in the Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh by state Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Union Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on the birth anniversary of the latter’s father and former Congress Union Minister late Madhav Rao Scindia.
According to Forest Department officials, the two big cats have been released in the park to restore the tigers to the park.
Officials said the tiger released today was captured in October 2022 from the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (MANIT) premises in Bhopal. From there it was initially sent to the Satpura Tiger Reserve (STR) near Bhopal, and now it has been captured again from there and released into the MNP.
The tigress has been brought from the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in MP, said officials.
Both the big cats would be kept in separate enclosures for some time, and after that they will be released into the wild in the MNP, which is spread in an area of about 375 square kilometres.
There was a plan to bring another tigress from the Panna Tiger Reserve in MP but it could not materialize, as the tigress could not yet be captured, officials said.
Officials said the plan is to bring two male and three female big cats to the MNP so that the tiger population can be revived in the park.
According to information, there was a substantial tiger population in the MNP, but the park gradually lost all its tigers and finally there were none left somewhere around 1995 to 1997, mainly because of poaching.
The MNP is named after the late Madho Rao Scindia, who was the erstwhile Maharaja of Gwalior and an ancestor of the Scindia family.