24th June, 2018


Many of the streams flowing through the Valmiki Tiger Reserve in Bihar, just 1km from the border with Nepal, are dry this summer. As the sun tilts west and the breeze turns gentle, herbivores emerge — spotted, barking and hog deer, monkeys, wild boar and a sloth bear. Close to a waterhole is a deer carcass, abandoned by a tiger.

“This is a fresh kill,” field director S Chandrashekhar observes. Divisional Forest Officer Gaurav Ojha confers with the tiger trackers. “T3 ka shaavak hai (T3’s cub),” tracker Mithilesh tells the officer after measuring pugmarks, referring to the codename of the mother. “This cub has made its first reported kill. Soon he’ll mark his terrain and win mating rights,” Ojha says.

The 900sqkm reserve has scripted a remarkable success story in tiger conservation. In the 1980s and 1990s, the forest, then looked after by the Bihar government, was full of people and machines engaged in pebble mining. The stone crushing units and gensets threw up dust and noise. Funds for staff salaries and conservation programmes were short, and the tiger census was irregular.

Poaching was also rampant and tiger numbers were dwindling.

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