IWN News

A Hyena Shows Up in Corbett’s Bijrani Zone on Reopening Day

IWN Report — Thursday, 15 October 2026

A hyena has been sighted in Uttarakhand‘s Corbett Tiger Reserve for the first time in years, an animal that had been feared lost from the region altogether.

Saket Badola, the reserve’s director, posted two photographs on X and described it as the first sighting of a hyena in recent times in the Bijrani zone. The zone opened to tourists Thursday, he wrote, after several months of closure for the monsoon. The pictures show a striped animal at the water’s edge among river stones, partly screened by grass.

Badola signed off with a welcome to visitors, and the replies followed. A regular who said they had been coming to Corbett for the past 10 years had never heard of a hyena there, and another reader recalled seeing one at Dudhwa Tiger Reserve about three decades ago. Three more replies called it great news, described striped hyenas as elusive and said they were thrilled to see Corbett open again.

Last Sightings

Published records of hyenas in Corbett aren’t unanimous on the last sighting. The newest is the August 2021 report, more than five years before Badola’s post.

December 2014. The Tribune reported a striped hyena along the reserve’s southern boundary, first caught on camera traps and then sighted by the deputy director of the time, Dr Saket Badola. The report said it raised the reserve’s mammal count to 56.
2016. Corbett deputy director Digant Nayak told ETV Bharat in March 2024 that a tourist saw a hyena inside the park in 2016, and that no hyena had been captured on any camera since.
11 January to 26 February 2019. Researchers from the Wildlife Institute of India and the National Tiger Conservation Authority recorded seven camera-trap captures of a striped hyena at seven locations during the All-India tiger estimation. Their paper, published on 26 June 2026 in the Journal of Threatened Taxa, reports no hyena captures in the 2021–22 survey.
August 2021. Zee News reported a striped hyena photographed in the park and quoted authorities calling it a good sign. The report, dated 13 August 2021, said the previous sighting was in 2017 and did not give the date of the new one.
March 2024. ETV Bharat reported that hyenas “seem to have gone extinct” in the park, an inference the article itself describes as a belief, with a study under way.

A hyena sighting carries weight in Corbett because the reserve is known above all for its tigers, while the striped hyena is a Near Threatened scavenger that feeds mainly on carcasses. The Journal of Threatened Taxa paper says the species is declining across its range because of persecution, habitat loss and a shrinking food supply, and its authors suggest the Corbett captures may reflect range expansion or isolated dispersal. They call for continued monitoring of its status and habitat use. Nayak said in 2024 that hyenas had become rare in the Terai region and had been spotted in Dudhwa and Pilibhit tiger reserves in Uttar Pradesh.

Sources: Saket Badola, Director, Corbett Tiger Reserve, on X · The Tribune: Striped hyena reported from Corbett reserve (2014) · ETV Bharat: Not a single hyena spotted in Jim Corbett National Park after 2016 (2024) · Journal of Threatened Taxa: First camera-trap records of three wild carnivores from Corbett Tiger Reserve, India (2026) · Zee News: Striped Hyena spotted in Corbett National Park after 5 years (2021)