A fresh new sighting of a Royal Bengal tiger in Gamthangpu above Lachen in north Sikkim has got the state talking.
The animal was spotted at an altitude of 3,600 m above sea level through camera traps set up by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) as part of its special high-altitude tiger project under the National Tiger Conservation Authority.
Earlier, another tiger was captured by Sikkim Forest Department’s camera trap.
The WWF is conducting a detailed survey in the region and has placed multiple camera traps across different locations in the state. It has also initiated a similar project for tiger conservation in West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
Forest Department of Sikkim and WWF both are going to conduct studies on Snow Lion and Tiger respectively.
Forest Department Principal Secretary-cum-PCCF ML Srivastava was quoted as saying by the Sikkim Express that the department has been instrumental in providing the manpower for the project which laid out the camera traps. “Over the course of years, Sikkim has been accustomed to legendary stories of tigers being found, but those were mere oral evidence. In the last three years, there have been reports those cattle to have been lost to big cats, not being certain of what animal was feeding on them. Since November 2018, we have had multiple sighting of the Royal Bengal Tiger here in Sikkim, which helps in asserting Sikkim is a thriving circuit for these big cats,” he said.
