Tiger found dead in Bandhavgarh reserve in MP, second big cat death in a week

A young tiger was found dead in the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve (BTR) in Madhya Pradesh’s Umaria district, with officials suspecting it was killed by an adult tiger.

This is the second death of a feline in BTR within a week.

The carcass of the sub-adult tiger, aged between 12 months and 18 months, was spotted in a trench in Dhamokhar range of the BTR on Tuesday, forest ranger Vijay Shankar Shrivastava said on Wednesday.

The carcass was about 36 hours old and it is suspected that the big cat died in a fight with an adult tiger, he said. The carcass was disposed of as per guidelines of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) after an autopsy, and its body samples were sent to a laboratory for examination, he said. On January 9, the carcass of a young tiger, aged between 15 months and 18 months, was found lying in a trench in the Pator range of BTR.

MP retained the “tiger state” status in the recent census (2022), with the number of big cats in the state rising to 785 from 526 in 2018.