To curb the increasing trend of man-animal conflict in Maharashtra, the Forest Department captured 36 problem carnivores, including tiger, leopard and sloth bear in last six years and released only three such wild animals in the wild, revealed a Right To Information (RTI) reply given by Maharashtra Forest Department recently. As per the RTI reply, “From March 2019 to April 2025, the Chief Wildlife Warden (CWW) of Maharashtra, issued 69 capture orders in which 36 problem animals were captured in various forest ranges in the State.” The highest 26 number of orders were issued for Chandrapur district itself followed by Nagpur (11 orders), Gadchiroli (7), Dhule (6), Pune (5), Solapur (2), Yavatmal (2), Thane (2), Nashik (2) and Amravati (1). The Forest Department captured two tigresses in 2019, 4 tigers and one leopard in 2020, 3 leopards and 1 sloth bear in 2021, 11 tigers and 2 leopards in 2022, 9 tigers in 2023, 1 tiger and 3 leopards in 2024 and only 1 tiger in 2025 so far. In 2025, the CWW issued nine orders for capturing, in which, only one tiger (T-3) has been captured by the department. The Forest team captured the tiger from Brahmapuri on April 17 and is currently in Gorewada Rescue Centre in Nagpur.

 

Out of nine orders, the Forest Department failed to trace three tigers and three leopards in different forest circles in the State. Whereas, the department is still working on to capturing two tigers, which are both in Solapur district. Like Chandrapur district, Nagpur is also suffering with increasing cases of man-animal conflict in last few years and as a result, villagers started protesting against such attacks by the wild animals.

 

Keeping the increasing cases in mind, the Forest Minister of Maharashtra Ganesh Naik ordered many measures to reduce man-animal conflict in Nagpur district. As per the RTI reply, in 2025, there were three capture orders released by CWW in Nagpur district in which one order was to capture Parseoni’s T-132 tiger and remaining two are in Bhandara district whereas all the three tigers are still elusive. As per the information shared in the document, all the captured tigers in the State were sent to Gorewada Rescue Centre (GRC) in Nagpur and Transit Treatment Centre (TTC), Seminary Hills. The GRC is facing space crunch for captive animals as the management is constructing more cages and enclosures in the next few months.