The Better India · 8 hours ago

Zeenat the Tigress: How a 300-Km Journey Across Three States Became Similipal's Biggest Conservation Success

When Zeenat, a young tigress translocated from Maharashtra to Odisha's Similipal Tiger Reserve, slipped out of the forest and traveled nearly 300 kilometers across three states, wildlife officials scrambled to bring her back while headlines called her a runaway. But Dr. Ravikant Khobragade, the veterinarian who had known her since Tadoba, read her differently: "She wasn't aggressive," he says. "She was alert. There's a difference." What looked like failure was a tigress doing exactly what a tigress must - moving through an unfamiliar world until she found a place worthy of her cubs. Today, a camera trap image shows Zeenat carrying one of her four healthy cubs through the forests of Similipal, the first proof that Odisha's genetic rescue programme is working, and a quiet reminder that conservation's most important ingredient is the willingness to wait for an animal to follow its own wisdom.