TN Forest Dept steps up surveillance after tribal youth killed in tiger attack

A senior forest official confirmed that the department has ramped up patrolling at the site where the body of the victim, identified as M. Kendhar Kuttan, was discovered on Thursday, March 27.

Kuttan, a member of the Toda tribal community from Kollakodumund in the 'Governor Shola' area, had reportedly entered the forest late on Wednesday night in search of a missing buffalo. His partially eaten body was found by villagers the next morning amid thick vegetation.

In response to the incident, a 20-member team from the Forest Department has been deployed to continuously monitor the area.

The team is patrolling the locality round-the-clock in an effort to track the movement of the tiger believed to be responsible for the attack.

Additionally, 15 camera traps have been strategically placed to capture footage of the carnivore.

The department has also begun placing cages in multiple locations in an attempt to safely capture the animal.

This marks the second fatal incident involving a big cat in the region within a fortnight.

Earlier, a 50-year-old woman who had gone missing while plucking tea leaves in an estate in Kalibata, near Ooty, was found to have been killed in a leopard attack.

Meanwhile, Nilgiris Member of Parliament A. Raja visited the victim's family on Friday and handed over a compensation amount of Rs 10 lakh from the government.

Speaking to the media, he said, "A special scheme will be rolled out soon to mitigate the frequent incidents of man-animal conflict in the Nilgiris."

The Nilgiris landscape, which includes the popular hill station of Ooty, holds the distinction of having the highest tiger population in the country.

The region is part of a vast contiguous forest stretch shared by Tamil Nadu and Kerala, encompassing the Periyar-Meghamalai cluster and the Anamalai-Parambikulam complex.

According to the 2022 nationwide tiger census conducted by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), Tamil Nadu recorded 306 tigers -- an increase from 264 in 2018.

Over the past two decades, the tiger population in this region has quadrupled.

Tiger conservation in India has evolved in two significant phases: The first, beginning in the 1970s, focussed on establishing protected areas under the Wildlife Protection Act. The second phase, initiated around 2005-2006, emphasised landscape-level conservation and rigorous monitoring through advanced technologies like camera trapping.

In the 2022 Census, 824 individual tigers were identified through scientific methods, compared to 981 estimated in 2018.