237 tigers died in last 2 years, govt tells LS

New Delhi: The government informed the Lok Sabha that 237 tigers died in the country in the last 2 years. It said 23% of deaths from 2012 to 2017 were due to poaching and 55% due to natural causes. Junior environment minister Mahesh Sharma said 7% of the deaths was due to unnatural causes not attributable to poaching. In case of the remaining 15%, the authorities found body parts or seized such parts at different points of time during the period- it means such deaths may or may not be due to poaching and that’s why such deaths are put in a different category.

Race cars in nat’l parks HC taunts govt

The Uttarakhand high court said on Friday that the forest department had failed to curb mistreatment of animals, such as elephants in captivity, and remarked that it has been unable to relocate 57 Van Gujjar families from the Corbett Tiger Reserve buffer zone or even deploy a special tiger protection force. “If you cannot conserve and protect tigers and elephants, we will ask the central government to denotify the national parks of the state and then you can create a race course and run cars over there,” remarked the division bench of chief justice Rajiv Sharma and justice Lok Pal Singh. The HC had earlier asked for elephants in captivity in the state to be rescued.

Dudhwa tiger Chandu strays into Nepal

Officials of Dudhwa tiger reserve and WWF-India are unable to trace the location of a tiger named ‘Chandu’ who was released into the national park in UP’s Lakhimpur Kheri with a radio collar in March 2018. According to the big cat’s latest GPS coordinates, Chandu moved towards Kheri and then strayed into Nepal. He was last spotted in the Himalayan country’s Kailali district, first near an airport in Dhangadhi and later towards the mountainous region in May. Dudhwa officials have also written to the Nepal wildlife authorities for information about the tiger, but they are yet to receive a reply from them.