Tiger found dead in Goa’s forest with teeth, nails missing; poaching suspected

AN grownup panthera tigris was found deadened on sat in the forests of Sacorda in Goa’s Dharbandora neighborhood, with its teeth and nails missing, raising concerns over possible poaching and renewed calls to implement the National Tiger Conservation Authority’s (NTCA) recommendation to declare a tiger reserve in the state.“We have recovered a carcass in a partially decomposed state and the cause of death is not immediately apparent. Prima facie, we can only state that the teeth and nails are missing,” a forest official, requesting anonymity, said.The carcass, whose postmortem report is pending, was found at Aalot, not far from the Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary in Mollem, the official added.Previously, a family of five tigers—an adult female and four grown cubs—were found poisoned to death in 2020. Another tiger was found killed in a trap in 2009.The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), which filed a report into the deaths of the tigers in 2020, had said that failure to declare a tiger sanctuary in Goa would mean the state was a “death trap for tigers.”“Within the Western Ghat landscape complex, Goa along with the Northern Karnataka region has the potential to increase the overall tiger population numbers by providing targeted management inputs to the PAs of the region,”“The protected areas of Goa (Mhadei WLS and Mollem WLS) are part of the Western Ghats landscape complex, which has the unique distinction of having the world’s largest tiger population. This landscape has several interconnected tiger reserves and protected areas along with reserve forests. However, factors like plantations, agriculture, and industrial and infrastructure development activities like widening of roads and railway lines are threatening the existing habitat connectivity in the Western Ghats. Without upgrading the legal status of Goa’s protected areas to that of a tiger reserve and putting in place a strong protection regime, the state may become a death trap for tigers dispersing in this landscape,” the NTCA said.The NTCA added that “declaring the sanctuary as a Tiger Reserve will provide much-needed access to technical, financial and monitoring support from NTCA for safeguarding the conservation values of the sanctuary. It will also empower the local communities residing inside the sanctuary by giving access to development opportunities.”Based on the NTCA’s recommendation, the Bombay High Court at Goa had, in July 2023, directed the state government to notify the Mhadei WLS and other areas as a tiger reserve under Section 38-V(1) of the Wildlife Protection Act within three months, while rapping the state government for continuing “to steadfastly avoid notifying the tiger reserve.”The NTCA had sought a tiger reserve in around 750 square kilometres of Western Ghats forests in Goa, comprising the Mhadei, Bhagwan Mahavir (Mollem), Netravali and Cotigao wildlife sanctuaries, which are contiguous with the Bhimgad Wildlife Sanctuary, the Anshi National Park–Dandeli Wildlife Sanctuary in Karnataka, and on one side the tiger corridor of Sindhudurg district, Maharashtra.The Goa government has filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the Bombay high court’s directive, stating that “the protected area proposed to be declared a tiger reserve has a huge population of approx. 1,00,000 inhabitants, spread across several villages and who have been living therein for more than 50 years; they would be most unwilling to be relocated elsewhere.”