At last, there's good news from Panna Tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh. 'T1', one of the two tigresses shifted to the park more than a year ago, was spotted with a litter of three cubs on Friday.
"We saw her when she was shifting the litter from one place to another," park director R S Murthy told The Sunday Express. All the cubs appear to be safe, he said.
The authorities got an indication about the cubs' birth in the third week of April but could not verify it because the tigress was in an inaccessible portion of the park.
One tigress each from Kanha and Bandhavgarh had been shifted to the park in March last year while a male tiger from Pench was moved there in November.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the state forest department started the plan to re-populate the park after it lost all its big cats, mainly to poaching that was rampant in the area for years.
The experiment, however, was not smooth. From not finding suitable tigresses to unavailability of helicopters to shift them, the forest authorities faced several hurdles along the way.
