Chennai: In a tragic incident, a 41-year-old tribal man was killed by a tiger in the forested area of Ooty in Tamil Nadu’s Nilgiris district on Thursday, officials said.
The victim has been identified as Kendra Kuttan, a member of the Thodar tribal community, residing in the Kollakode Mandi forest area of the Nilgiris.
According to forest officials, Kuttan’s partially devoured body was discovered deep inside the forest following a search operation.
Kuttan, who owned a few cattle, had ventured into the forest on Wednesday evening to search for a missing cow.
When he failed to return by Thursday morning, his family and area residents alerted the Forest Department. A joint search operation was launched by tribal members and forest officials, which led to the discovery of his remains.
Officials believe that due to the dense fog in the area, Kuttan may not have seen the tiger and accidentally walked into its path, resulting in the fatal attack.
The Nilgiris landscape, where Ooty is located, is known to have the highest tiger population in the country.
The contiguous forest stretch includes regions in both Kerala and Tamil Nadu, spanning the Periyar–Meghamalai cluster and the Anamalai–Parambikulam complex. According to the 2022 nationwide tiger census conducted by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), Tamil Nadu recorded 306 tigers, up from 264 in 2018. Over the past two decades, the tiger population in the region has quadrupled.
Tiger conservation in India has evolved in two significant phases. The first phase began in the 1970s with the enactment of the Wildlife Protection Act and the establishment of protected areas. The second phase, starting around 2005–2006, saw the adoption of a landscape-level conservation approach and stricter monitoring systems. In 2018, India’s tiger population was estimated at 981, while the 2022 census recorded 824 unique individuals through camera traps and other scientific methods.
–IANS