Tigress found dead in Sundarbans

Tiger Skin. File Photo

An elderly tigress was found dead near Andharmanik forest camp under Khulna forest range in the Bangladesh Sundarbans on 10 July, Friday. Said Bashir-Al- Mamun, divisional forest officer (DFO), Sundarbans West Range, Khulna.

He said, “Two legs of the tigress were severely injured. Probably a crocodile attacked it. We found it dead on Friday afternoon and later did an autopsy and buried the corpse after skinning it on Saturday, near our camp.”

The DFO, who went to see the dead tigress after hearing about it from the Andharmanik camp officials on Saturday, told The Daily Star that the tigress — aged 14 to 15 years — came near the Andharmanik camp about a week ago as the official saw it a few times in last week.

“They were cautious and restricted their movement as they saw the tigress near their camp. But on Friday, they saw it was sitting at a spot throughout the whole day. In the afternoon they went to check from far away and found flies around it. So probably, it died sometime between morning and noon on Friday,” the DFO said.

The tigress had severe injuries on two of its paws and on its cheek.

“Front right paw of the tigress was severely injured. Also it did not have four claws on its left rear paw. So it was unable to hunt and became very weak,” said the DFO.

Veterinarian from Khulna went to examine the tigress on Saturday and collected its organs for autopsy, the DFO said.

In 2019 the last tiger census found the number of tigers in Bangladesh part of Sundarbans was 114. After that forest officials found at least two dead tigers in the Sundarbans.