Overview
- The Gujarat Forest Department released camera-trap images and field data confirming a male tiger has lived inside Ratanmahal since February 2025.
- Forest officials estimate the animal’s age at about four to five years and say it appears healthy based on repeated sightings.
- Managers have begun prey augmentation by relocating herbivores such as sambar and chital, alongside enhanced surveillance and habitat security measures.
- The state has notified the National Tiger Conservation Authority and sought guidance for longer-term conservation and conflict mitigation.
- Tigers were recorded extinct in Gujarat in 1989, and a brief 2019 sighting ended in a death, making the current nine-month residency the longest documented stay and placing lions, leopards and a tiger in the state’s landscape.