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Royal Bengal Tiger awaits a red carpet welcome in Seshachalam
The presence of two big cats, one male and one female, confirms that there is a Tiger Corridor between Nallamala and Seshachalam, say forest officials
A tiger caught in a camera trap at a water body in the Veligonda reserve forest in Nellore district in June 2024.
In the first week of July 2017, a sub-adult male tiger was reportedly spotted venturing from the Nagarjuna Sagar Tiger Reserve (NSTR) into the Tiger Corridor located between the Nallamala and Seshachalam hills at Giddalur of Prakasam district.
A week later, the sighting of “suspect pugmarks” on a wet forest road in the Talakona Beat of SV National Park (SVNP) in Tirupati district during a routine combing operation stirred interest within the Forest Department circles.
Despite efforts by senior forest officials to document the evidence, there was ambiguity regarding its classification, with a few officials expressing divergent views.
“I saw it first. I am educated and can distinguish between a tiger and a leopard. I was asked to shut my mouth. I must say it was a leopard,” said a lower-rung Forest Department staffer.
Ten days later, 50 camera traps were brought from the Lankamalleswara Wildlife Sanctuary at Siddahout in Kadapa district and installed at various strategic locations in the SVNP zone. It, however, yielded no conclusive evidence. It led to a jibe from a forest official, “It’s not a leopard, but a tiger. You can’t expect it to wait for 10 days to give a pose.”
In a separate incident towards the end of 2019, a red sanders smuggler had reportedly spotted a tiger. Personnel of the Andhra Pradesh Red Sanders Anti-Smuggling Task Force, who were on combing duty, apprehended one of the dozen woodcutters. “I have seen a Puli,” he said, gasping for breath.
The task force personnel served him water and tried to calm him down. But, he managed to give them the slip and disappeare into the woods.
“We were confused. With the presence of a tiger around us is suspected, we felt unsafe and abandoned the spot,” said an official.
Responding to the incident, the then Inspector-General of Police (Task Force) M. Kantha Rao said, “There was a big talk about the presence of a tiger in Seshachalam in 2019. I conducted awareness sessions for the task force personnel on how to escape from a tiger attack, or avoid it. During this phase, we seized about 200 country-made weapons from several villages with a view to protecting wildlife,” he said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic period, the focus on presence of tigers in the Seshachalam hills was lost.
The issue came to the fore again now following “concrete evidence” that two tigers, a male and a female, were on the prowl in the Atmakur, Udayagiri, and Rapur forest ranges in the neighbouring Nellore district and sporadic sightings of the striped wonder elsewhere in Kadapa district.
On the eve of the International Tiger Day (observed on July 29), District Forest Officer (Tirupati Wildlife) Satish Reddy said, “It’s true that a tiger ventured into the Seshachalam forests from the NSTR in 2019. The following year, it returned to Nallamala. There is a clear Tiger Corridor between Nallamala and Seshachalam. Already, we have tiger sightings in the Badvel, Porumamilla, and Atmakur reserve forests in neighbouring Kadapa and Nellore districts districts. In two or three years, the presence of tiger in Seshachalam hills will be definite.”
The forest personnel who took part in measuring the “suspect tiger pugmarks” in 2017 say the same big cat might have turned up in 2019.
District Forest Officer (Nellore) A. Chandrasekhar was elated to say that there were two tigers, a male and a female, prowling the Atmakur, Udayagiri, and Rapur ranges.
Conducive habitat
“First, a female tiger arrived from Porumamilla (Kadapa) in September 2023. In April-May this year (2024), a male tiger made its entry. Connected to the Lankamalleswara Wildlife Sanctuary and Penusila Wildlife Sanctuary, the reserve forest in Nellore holds all the prerequisites for a tiger habitat. We have excellent forest cover. The element of poaching is completely gone. We have excellent sources of water in the wild, thanks to the Somasila and Veligonda projects,” he said.
Wildlife photographer Birdman Karthik, who travelled the length and breadth of the tiger reserves in India, says he is exhilarated to know that the “tiger is on the way to Seshachalam.”
“The tiger story in Seshachalam is not new. We have recorded history that British hunter Kenneth Anderson killed man-eating tigers in Kadapa and Tirupati districts. Now, we have evidence that the tiger is only a few km away from us. I hope the forest officials will accord a red carpet welcome to the Royal Bengal Tiger,” he said.
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