Tiger Scare Puts Villages Around Mysore Airport On Alert

BENGALUR: Villagers surrounding Mysore Airport were alerted by Mysore Division forest officials on January 5 after a tiger was caught on camera in the airport premises and moved from the Airport premises to nearby villages. As a precautionary measure, forest officials warned villagers not to go out after sunset and to ignore rumors spreading about the presence of a tiger in their vicinity.

Mysore Airport is located approximately 8 km from Mysore city on the Mysore-Ooty road. Sources told Deccan Chronicle on Wednesday: “The tiger, which strayed to the Airport a few days ago, may be the brother of the tiger that died in a road accident near the airport on January 29, 2024.” The animal met with an accident when the tiger was hit by a car speeding towards Nanjangud.

Meanwhile, forest officials collected clues about the tiger and saw it jumping over the barbed wire fence of the airport towards nearby villages/fields. The tiger injured itself while jumping, and forest personnel conducting a screening operation at the airport noticed the animal’s blood stains and guard hairs/underfur.

Mysore Division Deputy Conservator of Forests (DCF) K. Paramesh said that personnel attached to Mysore Division and Leopard Task Force carried out a combing operation and came across boxer tracks of the tiger about 1.5 km away from Mysore Airport. However, forest officials activated thermal drones to capture tiger movement, if any, but did not come across any.

As a precaution, a walk-through cage was installed in the airport building to trap the tiger. Also kept ready were domesticated elephants named Prashanth, Ranjan, Harsha and Sugreeva, who were adept in tiger-capturing operations.

“There was a continuous strip of forest of about 50 kilometers connecting Chamundi Hill near Mysuru city with the forest limits of Bandipur Tiger Reserve, but over time, fragmentation of forests cut off the connection. Now tigers seem to have made a comeback to their old range,” said a historian and researcher.

However, forest officials observe that the outskirts of Mysuru city offer an abundance of wild boars for the tiger to hunt, a contributing factor for tigers to take shelter in villages close to Mysuru city.