The tiger family remained on the road for approximately 15 minutes before leaving.

Tiger number 2402 strayed out of the Sariska reserve.

Jaipur:

A three-year-old male tiger was found dead at the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve (RTR) in Rajasthan’s Sawai Madhopur district, an official said on Monday.

The big cat may have died in a territorial fight, Anoop KR, Chief Conservator of Forests and RTR Field Director, said.

Forest guards found the tiger’s carcass in the Aamaghati area on Sunday morning with injury marks on the neck, leg and head.

“Camera traps showed movement of two tigers in the same area. So it is believed that the tiger died in a territorial fight,” Anoop said.

According to forest officials, Ranthambore faces challenges due to overcrowding of tigers, which often leads to fights over territory.

With over 70 tigers, including young ones and cubs, the reserve spanning 900 sq km is struggling to support them.

According to a study by the Wildlife Institute of India (2006-2014), the park’s safe capacity is around 40 adult tigers.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A fierce territorial battle between two tigresses at Maharashtra’s Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve has captured widespread attention after a video of the dramatic fight resurfaced online. The intense clash, recorded by safari tourists, shows the tigresses, Veera and Bhela, locked in a furious confrontation, their roars echoing through the forest. 

In the footage, onlookers watch from a safe distance as another group of tourists cautiously reverses their jeep to avoid getting too close to the tense scene. The fight reportedly took place at a hotspot for wildlife sightings within the reserve. Sources indicate the fight stemmed from a territorial dispute, a common but dramatic occurrence among tigers. The spectacle also sent nearby animals into a frenzy due to the escalating tension. 

The video, first shared by the Maharashtra Forest Department on X in February, was recently reposted on Instagram by the official account of Ranthambore National Park. 

The fierce fight has sparked a wave of reactions online.

A user commented on Instagram, “That was a long fight.”

Another wrote, “What an amazing sighting.”

“Territory fight,” read a comment. 

The Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve, located in Chandrapur district and about 150 km from Nagpur, is Maharashtra’s oldest and largest national park. It is part of India’s Project Tiger initiative and home to a variety of wildlife, including leopards, sloth bears, gaur, sambar, and barking deer, making it a vital conservation area and a popular destination for wildlife enthusiasts.

Ranthambore Tiger Reserve, located in Rajasthan, India, is one of the country’s premier tiger reserves, covering approximately 1,133 square km. The reserve is home to around 80 tigers, as per the 2022 census, and boasts a diverse habitat comprising dry deciduous forests, hills, and scrublands. The prey base is abundant, with spotted deer, sambar, and wild boar, and several lakes, rivers, and waterholes provide essential water sources. Ranthambore was one of the original nine tiger reserves selected for conservation under Project Tiger.

Mysuru:

A 48-year-old woman is suspected to have been mauled to death by a tiger near Moorband Betta in HD Kote Taluk in Mysuru on Saturday evening, after her mutilated body was found in the early hours of Sunday, official sources said.

The victim has been identified as Chikki from Malada Haadi in N Begur panchayat limits.

According to officials, the woman was reportedly attacked by a tiger when she was rearing goats. The big cat had dragged her body into the forest area.

The woman’s family members, villagers and forest staff had started a search for her on Saturday itself, official sources said. On Sunday morning her mutilated body was found near a forest watch tower.

Police and forest department officials visited the spot. The Antarasante police have registered a case.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Paris:

Tiger populations are on the rise in the jungles of India and Nepal and the predators are roaming ever closer to villages, sparking a race among conservationists to find ways of avoiding conflict.

They are increasingly finding solutions with artificial intelligence, a bunch of technologies designed to reason and make decisions like humans.

Experts from Clemson University in South Carolina and several NGOs published research last month on their work using AI-enabled cameras that they say could help revolutionise tiger conservation.

They placed tiny devices around enclosures in the two South Asian nations, both to protect villagers from the predators — and the predators from poachers.

According to their research, published in the BioScience journal, the camera system called TrailGuard can distinguish between tigers and other species and relay images to park rangers or villagers within seconds.

“We have to find ways for people and tigers and other wildlife to coexist,” Eric Dinerstein, one of the authors of the report, told AFP.

“Technology can offer us a tremendous opportunity to achieve that goal very cheaply.”

Elephants and Amazon loggers

The research claims the cameras were immediately effective, picking up a tiger just 300 metres from a village, and on another occasion identifying a team of poachers.

They say their system was the first AI camera to identify and transmit a picture of a tiger, and it has almost wiped out false alarms — when traps are tripped by passing boars or falling leaves.

The scheme is one of several putting an AI spin on the established ideas of wildlife surveillance.

Researchers in Gabon are using AI to sift their camera trap images and are now trying a warning system for elephants.

Teams in the Amazon are piloting equipment that can detect the sounds of chainsaws, tractors and other machinery associated with deforestation.

And US tech titan Google teamed up with researchers and NGOs four years ago to collect millions of images from camera traps.

The project, called Wildlife Insights, automates the process of identifying species and labelling images, saving many hours of laborious work for researchers.

Conservationists like Dinerstein, who also leads the tech team at the Resolve NGO, are sure that technology is helping their cause.

‘Early warning system’

Their goal is to ensure that 30 percent of the Earth’s land and oceans are designated protected zones by 2030, as agreed by dozens of governments last year, with that number eventually going up to 50 percent.

Those zones will need to be monitored, and animals will need to move safely between protected areas.

“That’s what we’re shooting for, and the critical element of that is an early warning system,” he said.

The plight of tigers underscores the size of the challenge.

Their habitats have been devastated across Asia and their numbers in India fell to an all-time low of 1,411 in 2006, before steadily rising to current levels of around 3,500.

In the mid-20th century, India was home to an estimated 40,000.

‘Jury still out’

Jonathan Palmer, head of conservation technology at the US-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), who was not involved in the study, said TrailGuard had exciting potential.

But Palmer, who helped found Wildlife Insights with Google, said the broader uses of AI in conservation were not yet settled.

“In most cases, AI species identification is still in its infancy,” he said.

His NGO recommends outside verification of any species identification done by AI.

And Palmer said the “jury was out” on whether AI was better deployed in cameras at the scene or afterwards on servers or laptops.

Those uncertainties aside, Dinerstein is widening the rollout of TrailGuard — this time with even bigger animals in his sights.

“Elephants wander outside parks all the time and it leads to a massive amount of conflict,” he said.

They destroy crops, cause chaos in villages and can even cause train crashes, with dozens of deaths every year, he added.

“There’s an immense opportunity here to prevent that.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Wildlife officials in Madhya Pradesh are testing an artificial intelligence-based camera system to monitor movements of tigers and other animals. TrailGuard AI will help in minimising poaching and human-animal conflict.

Here are 5 points on the AI system: