Tiger Reserves

PANAJI: The claimed sighting of a tiger in Siolim has led to a marked alertness among villagers, with some subsequently reporting strange happenings on the thickly forested hillside.
Shashikant Thakur, who works as a gardener at a celebrity's residence in Gaunsavaddo, claimed he saw the big cat on August 20, after he peered above the barbed wire fence along the bungalow's compound wall. The bungalow is the last residence below the dense hill range that extends from Siolim towards Oxel, Camurlim and beyond.
Dumbstruck and driven by panic, he ran for safety towards the main gate. His co-workers said it took some effort to get the shocked Thakur to talk.
"I heard a sound outside and saw, in horror, that a tiger was standing on the branch of a fallen tree, barely a few metres away from the compound wall," he later told locals. But, days later, when photographs of a tiger and a leopard were shown to him to help him identify what he'd actually seen, he pointed to the spotted cat.
Two kilometres west, along the same stretch of the hill, in Sodiem and Maina, villagers claimed to have seen a tiger, too.
Geographically, the area lies about 40 to 50km west of the known tiger habitat in the Mhadei wildlife sanctuary, leading villagers to wonder if the tiger was a stray that ended up in Siolim through the Tillari canal. Some reported seeing pug marks in the canal and a carcass of a dog. "We also heard the strange sounds of a cow, as if caught by a big cat by its neck," a local said.
A forest official dismissed the claim, stating that a tiger is most unlikely to enter the area. "Leopards can easily adapt themselves and feed on different prey, ranging from rats to buffaloes. Tigers, on the other hand, rely more on larger ungulates, which are large mammals such as giraffes, deer, cattle and other such prey," the official said.
Following the incident, Siolim-Sodiem sarpanch Nilesh Vaingankar, alerted the forest department. He said a trap has been laid in the Sodiem area of the hill as locals there claimed to have sighted a tiger.
"Many cattle, and even dogs, could be seen passing through this area. But out of ten, only two canines can be seen now, while cattle have stopped grazing on the hill slope," a villager said.
The area, with a verdant hill range and extensive plateaus, is largely a cashew plantation, with green cover spreading thicker during the monsoon. "Tigers were sighted here many decades ago, as my father told me," Alec Madeira, a villager from Gaunsavaddo, said.
Even now, the fauna is quite diverse. "There are a good number of feral pigs, peacocks, monkeys, porcupines, hare and jungle fowl," Madeira added.
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