Why it is in the news
On 2 October 2026, during Wildlife Week, a three-year-old tigress, T138, captured in Valmiki Tiger Reserve (Bihar), was released into Buxa Tiger Reserve in Alipurduar district, West Bengal, in the presence of Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav and West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari. It is the first tiger brought in under the Tiger Augmentation and Recovery Project run by the State with the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), and it marks an attempt to rebuild a breeding tiger population in a reserve that had no stable resident tigers for years.
The exam angle
Issue: Moving from protecting existing tiger populations to engineering recovery in vacated habitats, with Buxa as the first big-cat reintroduction in West Bengal.