Pugmarks of tiger spotted at Sunderban village

kolkata: The pugmarks of a Royal Bengal tiger have been spotted at Chargheria village under Sunderban Tiger Reserve (STR) with villagers raising an alarm that the tiger might have entered into human habitat.

"Pugmarks have been sighted, but it is too early to be sanguine of the fact that the big cat has strayed into the village. However, our teams have been mobilised and a temporary fencing has already been installed to prevent the tiger from entering into the village. Crackers are being burst to frighten the tiger and push it back into the forest, if it is hiding in the mangrove forest cover close to the village, " a senior official of the state Forest department said.

The villagers claimed that they had spotted the tiger. A team from Sundarban Coastal police station and forest officials is on the spot.

Debal Roy, state Chief Wildlife Warden, said STR was much more compact in comparison to the South 24-Parganas forest division.

In this month itself, there had been two instances when the big cat had entered into human habitat and the forest officials had toiled hard to capture the tiger and release them back to the forest. Tiger expert Joydip Kundu said tiger straying in human habitat was not uncommon in Sunderbans.

However, with the forest department putting nylon nets in the interface, such incidents have become minimal.

There was also round the clock monitoring by forest guards to check whether netting was being compromised.

"Sometimes the tiger gets confused with the vegetation inside the forest and those found in the village borders being more or less the same. Moreover, it can prey easily on livestock in the villages,"Kundu pointed out.