Tiger helps uncover timber ‘depots’ in Arunachal national park 

Timber smugglers managed to carve a dirt track to the core area of the Namdapha Tiger Reserve 

  A tiger spotted after an eight-year gap could have helped uncover timber ‘depots’ deep inside India’s easternmost tiger reserve. 

On March 14, officials in Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang district found several timber depots in the core area of the 1,985 sq. km Namdapha National Park and Tiger Reserve. These depots were along a dirt track about 15 km from the route a tiger had taken to be camera-trapped near the park’s Deban Forest Inspection Bungalow (IB). 

The track was carved by unauthorised loggers and members of a timber-smuggling ring. 

The tiger was trapped in cameras set up near the IB after the forest guards reported some pugmarks on January 31. It was the second tiger spotted in Namdapha after one in 2015. 

“There are reasons to believe that the logging activities may have forced the tiger out of the dense, core area of Namdapha toward the IB, which is close to a 157-km road from Miao to Vijaynagar through a large stretch of the park,” a forest official said, declining to be quoted. 

The office of Namdapha’s field director is at Miao, a sub-divisional town. Vijaynagar, close to the Myanmar border, is Changlang’s remotest circle headquarters. 

The core area, largely inaccessible, is often not patrolled because the park is understaffed with too few guards to even protect areas closer to human habitations, he said.