A tiger has returned to Ratanmahal, a landscape Gujarat had long written off, as reported by Times of India. After wandering in from Madhya Pradesh nine months ago, the young male has defied the state’s extinction narrative and exposed the emptiness of two decades of official complacency. His arrival is not a miracle; it is a reminder of how easily tigers reclaim space when humans stop erasing it. For now, he is alone, holding a forest that has not heard a tiger’s call since 1985, and the responsibility for his survival lies entirely on human will.
A Lone Tiger In Ratanmahal Redraws A State’s Map
Forest officials say the animal began moving along the Gujarat–Madhya Pradesh border in mid-February before settling firmly inside Ratanmahal. The nine-month stay is the longest confirmed presence of a tiger in the state since the 1980s, a stark contrast to Gujarat’s 2001 declaration of local extinction. Surveillance has intensified—CCTV tracking, pugmark monitoring, and round-the-clock field reports—but technology alone cannot compensate for decades of structural inaction that left these forests without big cats.
Officials admit that the last censused evidence before this year in Ratanmahal dates back to a 1999 pugmark record, and the only verifiable sighting since then was a fleeting 2019 encounter captured by a schoolteacher. State agencies are eager to treat this new arrival in Ratanmahal as a symbol of resurgence, but a single tiger is not recovery. It is vulnerability in its purest form.
Conservation Demands More Than Monitoring
To keep the tiger alive, Gujarat has started translocating chital and sambar to restore a prey base that should never have collapsed in the first place. Early signs look encouraging—fawns appearing, ungulates settling—but prey supplementation without long-term habitat commitment risks becoming another performance for paperwork. As long as the tiger remains solitary, every kilometre he walks carries danger: snares from poachers, retaliation from livestock-dependent communities, road pressure, and the constant risk of drifting into human-dominated spaces.
Veteran biologist Y. V. Jhala has urged the state to formally notify the Indian tiger authority (NTCA) that the tiger has remained for nine months. This step is not bureaucratic nicety; it is the only pathway to securing a female tiger and building a viable population. Without such action, Gujarat risks celebrating a temporary guest rather than rebuilding a lineage.
A Larger Crisis Beyond One State
Nearly 30% of India’s tigers now live outside designated reserves, a symptom of fragmented landscapes and planning failures that consistently treat wildlife as an afterthought. Human–tiger conflict is rising, yet states continue to respond with panic trapping, relocations, or the lazy argument that tigers do not belong outside protected zones. The new Tigers Outside Tiger Reserves (TOTR) Project, launched nationwide in 2025, aims to confront this crisis across 80 forest divisions—including Gujarat—by reducing conflict, curbing poaching, and improving degraded habitats. It is a necessary step, but its success depends entirely on local governments choosing action over denial.
If Gujarat is serious, it must move beyond monitoring and embrace a future where Ratanmahal is not an accident but a sanctuary. That requires political courage: habitat expansion, conflict-prevention systems, strict snare-free protocols, and transparent reporting. It also requires recognising that tigers cannot be kept inside administrative boxes. They disperse, they explore, they claim space. Governments must match that ambition.
The tiger in Ratanmahal has shown what is possible when a forest retains even a fraction of its wildness. Whether he becomes the founding male of a restored population or just another footnote to state neglect will depend on decisions made now. His future hinges on safeguarding movement lines that keep India’s big cats alive—a truth underscored by the role of corridors, which remain the backbone of long-term tiger survival.
Source: Times of India, India
Photo: Times of India, India
