Tigers Return to Buxa: How India Brings Tigers Back to an Empty Forest
A three-year-old tigress, code-named T138, was shifted from Valmiki Tiger Reserve in Bihar to Buxa Tiger Reserve in West Bengal. She was released at the start of Wildlife Week 2026 (the first week of October).
She was first kept in a small fenced enclosure of about 2 hectares with a water body. This is called a soft release: the animal gets used to the new forest before it is set fully free.
She wears a satellite collar (a collar that sends her location through satellites), so forest staff can track where she moves.
This is the first step of a phased plan: the state forest department has said six tigers in all will be brought to Buxa, with the remaining five over about three years. Two more tigers have already been identified.
The official goal is not just to "bring tigers back", but to create conditions where tigers can settle, breed and become a self-sustaining population (a population that survives on its own without more tigers being brought in).
The work is being done by the West Bengal Forest Department with the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII). Since 2018, more than 800 chital (spotted deer) were released and about 380 hectares of grassland were restored to build up the tiger's food supply first.
Project Tiger and the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA)
Project Tiger is India's national programme to save the tiger. It began on 1 April 1973 with 9 tiger reserves. Today it protects tigers through a network of special forests called tiger reserves. The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) is the legal body, set up under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, that runs and supervises this programme.
The release of tigress T138 in Buxa was planned and approved under the NTCA's framework, with the Wildlife Institute of India giving scientific support. It shows how Project Tiger has moved from simply guarding forests to actively rebuilding tiger populations in reserves where they had vanished.
Tiger Reintroduction and Translocation in India
Tiger translocation means catching a tiger from one forest and shifting it to another forest. When the aim is to bring tigers back to a place where they have died out, it is called reintroduction. When the aim is to add tigers to a place where only a few remain, it is called augmentation (or supplementation). India has become one of the world's leaders in this difficult work.
The shifting of tigress T138 from Valmiki to Buxa follows the standard reintroduction steps: years of prey building first, a source reserve with a growing tiger population, a soft release in an enclosure, and satellite-collar tracking. It is a reintroduction because Buxa had no resident breeding tigers for many years.
Buxa Tiger Reserve
Buxa Tiger Reserve is a tiger reserve in the Alipurduar district of northern West Bengal. It lies in the Dooars, the strip of plains and foothills at the base of the Eastern Himalayas, along the border with Bhutan. It covers about 760 sq km and was made a tiger reserve in 1983, as India's 15th tiger reserve.
Buxa is the destination of India's latest tiger reintroduction. Tigress T138 from Valmiki Tiger Reserve in Bihar, a Terai forest with a similar landscape and prey, has been released here as the first of a planned six tigers.
- Tigress T138, about 3 years old, shifted from Valmiki Tiger Reserve (Bihar) to Buxa Tiger Reserve (West Bengal)
- Released at the start of Wildlife Week 2026, first through a soft release in a 2-hectare enclosure
- Fitted with a satellite collar for monitoring
- Plan: 6 tigers in total, in phases over about three years
- Preparation since 2018: over 800 chital released, about 380 hectares of grassland restored, 2 villages voluntarily relocated
- Valmiki Tiger Reserve: tigers rose from 31 (2018) to 54 (2022); it borders Chitwan National Park in Nepal
- Buxa: tiger reserve since 1983, about 760 sq km
- India: 3,682 tigers (AITE 2022), 58 tiger reserves