Visitors to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) will now get to see tigers from a closer distance as compared to previous years. The forest authorities have released one of the tigers into a bigger enclosure so that the big cat gets more space to roam around.
So far, only lions were able to roam in a bigger enclosure, which is separate from space where tigers are kept. Whenever visitors opting for lion and tiger safari would enter the tiger enclosure in a bus with grills on the windows, they would the animal in secondary cages that are relatively smaller and inside the bigger enclosure.
Talking to dna, Vikas Gupta, chief conservator of forest and director of SGNP said, "Fencing work was being carried out earlier due to which we had to keep the tigers in secondary cages. With the work now complete, it indeed is a good year for the tigers."
On Saturday, the authorities released Palash, one of the nine tigers in the safari area of the park, into the bigger enclosure.
"After releasing Palash, we observed its behaviour as to how it was reacting to the surroundings and we didn't not find anything unusual about it. In the coming days, we will release other tigers too in this primary and bigger space on a rotational basis," added Gupta.
Soon after the stripped animal entered its new home, it roamed around the cage to familiarise itself with the surroundings and also sharpened its claw by scratching it on the bark of a tree.
Tigers mark their territory by way of two ways – leaving claws marks on the trees as their territory boundary; and leaving behind urine and secretions from their glands to draw their territory in the form of scent.
