An eight-year-old tigress and her entire litter of four cubs died within nine days at Kanha Tiger Reserve’s Sarhi range in Madhya Pradesh, in what wildlife officials fear may be the reserve’s first Canine Distemper Virus (CDV) outbreak in over a decade.
Preliminary investigations point to CDV as the likely cause, with veterinarians and wildlife forensic experts working to confirm the source. The carcass of one cub has been transported to the School of Wildlife Forensic and Health in Jabalpur, while blood and tissue samples are being analysed at specialised laboratories.
CDV is among the most dangerous viral threats to tiger populations — highly contagious, with no cure once infection takes hold. Tigers contract the virus through direct contact with infected animals; it begins as a respiratory and gastrointestinal illness before progressing to the central nervous system, where neurological cases are invariably fatal. Because tigers cannot sustain the virus on their own, infection spills in from domestic dogs or common wild carnivores that serve as a permanent reservoir.
The outbreak has reignited long-standing concerns about enforcement of India’s wildlife disease protocols. The NTCA mandates vaccination of all stray animals within a 5-km radius of tiger reserves — and is explicit that once a tiger is infected, it cannot be saved, making prevention at the source the only viable defence. Kanha-based wildlife activist Ajay Dubey, who said this was the first suspected CDV case in the reserve in more than a decade, pointed to a familiar failure: villagers enter the reserve illegally with dogs to collect forest produce, and the mandated vaccination of dogs and livestock near reserve boundaries is not carried out seriously.
The deaths bring Madhya Pradesh’s tiger toll for 2026 to 27. India’s previous major CDV episode — 28 Asiatic lions dead within two weeks at Gir Wildlife Sanctuary in September 2018 — remains a warning of how fast the virus moves through isolated big cat populations.
Sources: The Print · The Federal / PTI · ProKerala / IANS
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