Remembering Nandan: The Wild Tiger of Nandankanan

Remembering Nandan: The Wild Tiger of Nandankanan

The much known tiger Nandan from Nandan Kanan succumbed to prolonged illness on 11th May 2024 at a ripe old age of about eighteen years. My City Links, which had featured the tiger in an article on tigers in contemporary Odisha, mourns the sad demise by remembering Nandan through excerpts of this article by well-known wildlife conservationist and naturalist Aditya Panda:

Nandan through the years

In October 2012, a tiger sighting was reported near Khuntuni, close to the Cuttack – Sambalpur highway. Initially, it was dismissed as a rumour. Soon, however, undeniable evidence emerged in the shape of pugmarks in the area. Over the course of the following months, the tiger appeared and disappeared. Evidence would appear, sometimes days, sometimes weeks apart, and then the tiger would seem to vanish. This started happening across Dhenkanal and Cuttack districts. Elephant trackers of the Athagarh Forest Division saw the tiger crossing a narrow road near Mundali and heading towards River Mahanadi. If the tiger would cross the river, Chandaka – Dampara Wildlife Sanctuary was just beyond the opposite bank. Sure enough, some days later firewood collectors from the villages inside Chandaka reported seeing a tiger! It even killed a cow inside the sanctuary. This was the first recorded tiger in Chandaka since the 1960s!

Clearly, this was a dispersing male tiger, young and in his prime, looking to establish his territory in a forest rich in prey and tigresses. Would he find such a forest? It was totally unlikely. Chandaka did not have any tigresses, nor did Kapilash Wildlife Sanctuary nearby. The tiger wouldn’t go to Satkosia––100kms as the crow flies––as he most likely originated from there and must have had his reasons for leaving. Satkosia was bereft of any breeding population of tigers. By now this tiger’s progress across the human dominated landscape between Satkosia and Bhubaneswar, had become apparent: the tiger would most likely land up at Nandankanan Zoo, sensing the presence of its population of captive tigresses. Nandankanan, after all, shared a boundary with Chandaka.

Sure enough, on the evening of Makar Sankranti (January), 2013, the tiger visited a private farm house near Nandankanan. For three months after that first detection within Bhubaneswar city, the tiger remained in the vicinity of the zoo. He was constantly exploring the area, even crossing the busy NH-5 near Janla before returning back to Nandankanan Wildlife Sanctuary. Once in a while he would be seen by truck drivers along the Barang-Chandaka route. But most of the time he managed to remain undetected. He was likely feeding off the spotted deer and wild pigs that inhabit the area. There wasn’t a single reported case of attacks on humans or livestock. The tiger was doing what tigers do best in human dominated landscapes––remaining low profile, avoiding conflict, surviving. He was set on avoiding humans and finding habitat with tigresses.

One of the zoo tigresses perhaps came into oestrus around that time. The tiger began hanging around her enclosure. By then he had been captured on camera traps set by the zoo authorities and was regularly caught on CCTV security cameras as well. That’s when the zoo authorities decided to bait him and trap him. He was lured into one of the enclosures. The gates were shut. But he was a wild tiger. He wouldn’t take well to captivity. In no time the tiger had scaled the 14ft fence of the enclosure and was out again! Sadly for him, the lure of tigresses was too hard to resist and he continued to occupy the area. He was captured again, this time he was kept in an enclosure that was better secured.

This sort of capture was totally against every law and policy of wildlife conservation. A healthy, wild tiger that was not engaged in any conflict with humans cannot be captured in India and certainly not for the purpose of being kept in a zoo. Such animals are of priceless conservation value and every effort must be made to keep them in the wild, in natural habitat so that they can continue to serve their ecological function. Wildlife conservationists were outraged at this and demanded that he be released. The National Tiger Conservation Authority advised the State government to have the tiger fitted with a GPS tracking collar and released in Satkosia or Similipal tiger reserves. Satkosia was on the verge of local tiger extinction. Similipal has now been recommended for artificial tiger supplementation because of the paucity of breeding male tigers in its population. Some adamant, influential officers from the zoo administration, however, refused to part with an animal that they believed was of more use for zoo breeding! 

Thus, a fine wild tiger, unimaginatively named ‘Nandan’ was touted as “voluntarily” joining the zoo. A similar line had been touted in the 1960s when Chandaka’s last wild tigress (called ‘Kanan’) had jumped into a moated enclosure to join a male tiger for mating when she didn’t find one in the wild––unwittingly trapping herself for life.

Nandan now languishes in the zoo. His spirit nearly broken as noisy tourists stare and scream at him. He has fathered cubs, though. Cubs who will continue to languish in zoos. Nandan would have been far more useful to the purpose of tiger conservation had he fathered cubs in Satkosia or Similipal. This, especially so when Odisha now has barely only a single viable tiger population left: Similipal. Even that population might not survive long without artificial supplementation of tigers from Central India, as has been recommended by the report of the All India Tiger Estimation Exercise, 2018.