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Van Vihar which is situated along side the picturesque Upper Lake of Bhopal recently received two young male tigers from Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve after they turned man-eaters.
"Two young tigers aged nearly two-years have arrived in the Van Vihar as they have turned man-eaters," Assistant Director, A K Khare told PTI on Friday.
With the arrival of these two, now Van Vihar has three such tigers while the total population of tigers have gone up to twelve, he said.
These two young tigers have killed three persons including a forest chowkidar recently in Bandhavgarh following which it was decided to shift them to Bhopal for keeping them in an special enclosure with minimum human interface, he said.
After they were brought here from Bandhavgarh, one of them was not having meals, but now both of them started eating food and are adjusting to their captivity.
The other man-eater tiger aged about six years was also brought from Bandhavgarh after it killed two persons few years back.
Besides them, the park also has four man-eater panthers and all of them were kept in separate enclosures away from the visitors inside the Van Vihar which was declared as National Park in the year 1983 and spread into an area of 4.45 square kilometer situated virtually in the heart of Bhopal.
While the six-year-old man-eater tiger was named as Nahar by the park authorities, the two new arrivals are yet to get an official name.
The park`s veterinarian, Dr Atul Gupta said normally such animals takes one to one-and-a-half months time to adjust to the new environment as these two are at their prime and are very aggressive, natually they will take time to settle in the Van Vihar as they have just separated from their mother.
He also said that after they turn three-years-old, they might be used for raising the population of tigers in the park depending upon how well they gel with a tigress.
If they get along well, then definitely the off-spring would be of superior nature as they were brought to the Van Vihar straight from the wild and are genetically stronger than other tigers living in an enclosed campuses.
Bhopal`s Van Vihar is fast gaining popularity among the visitors of the state capital as over 42,000 tourists including locals visited the park in the month of June as compared to nearly 34,000 last year in the same month.
The people can have a glimpse of both herbivores and carnivores in the park with former moving freely inside the Van Vihar and latter kept in open-air large enclosures.
Besides, the park has sometime back introduced bicycles in the Van Vihar and the facililty allows one to hire the same and peddle around the park`s five-km long track (one-way) to get close to the nature as it offers a lake view on one side and animals, mammals and avian creatures welcomes you on the other.
