No new Royal Bengal tiger spotted in West Bengal's Buxa Tiger Reserve

The forest department-installed camera captured a photo of a Royal Bengal Tiger on Saturday.

Pic for representational use only

New Delhi: After reports about the rare tiger sightings in West Bengal’s Buxa forest in Alipurduar, it has now emerged that no new tiger sightings have been recorded there. 

The forest department had recently installed a camera that appeared to have captured a photo of what looked like a Royal Bengal Tiger on Saturday. It was earlier reported that the ferocious mammal was spotted in the 22-mile road at 12 and 13 compartment junctions.

The forest department had earlier claimed that the image was captured at 1 am. The pugmark of the animal resembled that of a full-grown Royal Bengal Tiger and was found at the area near a river deep inside the forest, about 20 km from the road, a forest department official had earlier said.

“We placed a camera trap in the nearby forest and today a tiger has been captured in East Damanpur forest range,’’ the forest department later said. 

The news of rare tiger sighting in Buxa forest and tiger reserve, where tigers are reportedly virtually extinct, in more than two decades had triggered a wave of happiness.

Forest Minister Jyotipriyo Mallick had said that a forest department team from Kolkata will reach the area on Monday to examine the pugmarks and scrutinize the image.

According to Mallick, the state was planning to bring 20 tigers from Assam to Buxa where the existence of big cats was not spotted in the past two decades. 

A tiger was last spotted in Buxa forest in 1998 and then media reports claimed another sighting in 2010. Sunderbans in south Bengal is known to be a habitat for tigers with 95 big cats counted there in the last census.