A tigress of Corbett reserve was found dead at the ripe old age of 12 on Tuesday. This is the first death of a tiger this year in the reserve that has 190 tigers above one and a half years of age; and the fourth death in Uttarakhand that has 340 tigers in total. The state lost eight tigers in 2014.
The postmortem examination was carried out according to the National Tiger Conservation Authority protocols which mandates the presence of veterinarians, non-government organisation representatives and forest officials.
The animal could have died of hunger as its two canine teeth, the pincer weapon to snap the life out its prey, had worn out.
"It was a natural death. There were no injury marks on its body and its canine teeth were worn out,” said Saket Badola, the deputy director of the reserve. A tiger has a lifespan of 12-15 years in the wild, and could go up in captivity.
From 2010 till June 2014, 52 tigers died in the reserve and its landscape that includes seven forest divisions--Lansdowne, Haridwar, Ramnagar, Terai West, Terai East, Haldwani and Dehradun forest divisions-- due to natural causes, poaching, according to the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), a Delhi-based NGO.
