Baripada: On Saturday, authorities at Similipal Tiger Reserve (STR) released ‘Jamuna’, a Royal Bengal Tigress brought from Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) in Maharashtra , back into the wild from her soft enclosure.

The tigress has now settled in the core area of the STR and is being closely monitored by a trained team, senior official said.

“For the first time we have a tiger supplementation anywhere in the world to enhance the gene pool of tigers,” Odisha ‘s Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF), Susanta Nanda, posted pictures and videos of the tigress being released into the wild on X, while wished for the success of the program.

The two-and-a-half-year-old tigress, named Jamuna, had been kept in a soft enclosure at STR since her arrival from Maharashtra on October 27. She was brought to the reserve as part of a translocation project aimed at preventing inbreeding and improving the gene pool of tigers in the reserve, where 50 percent of the population is melanistic.

Meanwhile, the wildlife wing of the Forest Department has also reached the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra to bring another tigress.

At present, Odisha has 30 tigers, of which 27 tigers are found in STR. Though STR has a unique population of melanistic tigers, in-breeding among the closed population has emerged as a looming threat to striped predators in the protected area. So the authority has decided to bring tigers from Maharashtra, they said.

Earlier, the state’s effort to translocation of tiger from Madhya Pradesh “failed” due to protests by villagers living on the fringes of Satkosia Tiger Reserve, where one male tiger ‘Mahavir’ and a tigress ‘Sundari’ from Kanha Tiger Reserve and Bandhavgarh respectively were introduced in 2018.

While Mahavir was found dead, Sundari was sent back to its original habitat in 2021 after it allegedly killed two persons.

(with agency inputs)