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Our Correspondent
Imphal, July 11 (EMN): Manipur forest officials have installed camera traps at the remote border of Kuilong part 2 village area to capture the actual image of a suspected tiger that reportedly mauled three cows to death recently.
Informing this, Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), Kh Hitler of Tamenglong district, who is presently camping at the Kuilong part 2 village on Sunday said, "We've installed two camera traps in the possible tiger trail at the village to capture the wild animal on film so that we can check it after sometime". The step was taken up after three cows were mauled to death by a wild animal suspected to be a tiger at Kuilong part 2 village under Tamei subdivision located about 200 km north-west of Imphal in Manipur’s Tamenglong district, bordering Nagaland in the north and Assam in the west on July 6.
The following day, the officials received the photographs of the dead cows and footprints of the wild animal from the villagers. On seeing the shape and size of the pugmarks, the DFO concluded that it would be a female tiger. "The pugmarks were 15X15 sq cm, which is bigger than that of leopards (7.5/7.5 sq cm)", he said.
The state Forest and Environment minister, Awangbow Newmai informed that the senior officials of the department had discussed the matter and the DFO of Tamenglong was sent to investigate the matter. They started their investigation by placing the camera traps on Saturday noon.
"As the footprint of the wild animal is around seven inches we are still suspecting that it could be a tiger. There are also reports of cows being killed in the same village area last year", Awangbow said.
The state forest officials appraised the matter to the National Tiger Conservation Authority. Tamenglong district has been witnessing reports of spotting a tiger in the past few years and the matter was even discussed in the state assembly in the recent past. However, not enough evidence was tabled in the house. The first ever tiger survey was also conducted in the forest of Tamenglong and Senapati districts in 2019. However, there was no report capturing any footage of tigers.