In the forests of western Maharashtra, a tigress named Hirkani has begun a new chapter.
Officially identified as STR-06, she was released into the Koyna Wildlife Sanctuary in Sahyadri Tiger Reserve after being brought from Pench and cleared fit by veterinary teams. Her journey covered nearly 900 kilometres across the state, but what it carries is larger than distance. It signals another step in Maharashtra’s effort to rebuild tiger presence in a landscape that had slowly fallen silent.
Hirkani is the third tigress introduced under Operation TARA, short for Tiger Augmentation and Range Expansion, a recovery programme designed to help restore tigers to the Sahyadri landscape. The reserve stretches across 1,165 square kilometres in Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur and Ratnagiri, and officials hope these introductions will help shape a stable breeding population over time.
That goal gives Hirkani’s release a meaning that extends beyond a single relocation.
A landscape waiting for its missing link
Sahyadri is one of Maharashtra’s most layered forested landscapes, shaped by ridges, valleys and large reservoirs, and woven together by the Koyna Wildlife Sanctuary and Chandoli National Park. It is home to gaur, sambar, mouse deer, hornbills, leopards and wild dogs. For years, though, one part of that ecological chain remained fragile: the presence of a settled tiger population.
That is what Operation TARA is trying to change.
The programme was designed to strengthen tiger numbers and genetic diversity in Sahyadri by bringing in carefully selected animals from healthier populations. Earlier relocations brought tigresses Chanda and Tara into the reserve. With Hirkani now in Koyna, the recovery effort enters a phase where individual movements begin to matter more closely, especially as resident male tigers already move through parts of the landscape.
Tiger translocations aim to restore prey balance and strengthen breeding populations in forests. Photograph: (Rohan Bhate/ Honorary WildLife Warden)
Recent reporting places the current number at seven tigers in all, four males and three females. Each addition increases the possibility of the forest beginning to hold its own population again.
That matters because tigers influence the health of a forest in visible, everyday ways. By preying on herbivores such as deer and gaur, they keep grazing in check. That balance allows vegetation to recover, which in turn supports a wider range of species across the landscape. In a region like the Western Ghats, where biodiversity is already dense and interconnected, these shifts travel far beyond one reserve.
Sahyadri’s recovery now rests on whether these pieces come together over time.
What it takes to bring a tiger landscape back
Forest teams will continue to track Hirkani and the other tigresses through radio collars and field monitoring, watching how they explore, settle and begin to claim space within the reserve.
But bringing tigers back to a landscape is only one part of the work. Helping people live with their return is what gives such efforts a future.
And this is already being shaped in places like Pilibhit Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pradesh, where local residents are stepping into the role ofbagh mitras, or ‘friends of the tiger’. These are trained community members who track tiger movement, calm tensions in villages, and act as a bridge between people and the forest department.
The Bagh Mitra programme was instituted by WWF-India in 2019 to help mitigate human-tiger conflict around Pilibhit Tiger Reserve. Photograph: (WWF India)
In a region where conflict once escalated quickly, their presence has helped prevent panic, guide responses on the ground, and create space for both people and wildlife to move more safely.
That example offers a direction for Sahyadri.
A tiger landscape is rebuilt through more than relocation. It takes people who understand the forest, systems that respond in time, and a shared sense of responsibility between those who protect wildlife and those who live alongside it.
Sahyadri may need its own version of that effort in the years ahead.
For now, Hirkani’s release is a beginning. And sometimes, that is how a forest starts finding its roar again.
