Context: Recently, a 10-year-old ailing male tiger, in the Pench Tiger Reserve (PTR) has succumbed to a respiratory illness. The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the organisation that manages the protection of India’s 3,000-odd tigers is puzzled on whether the tiger should be tested for the novel coronavirus disease.
About Pench Tiger Reserve

• It is located in Madhya Pradesh in Seoni and Chhindwara districts.
• It  is one of the major Protected Areas of Satpura-Maikal ranges of the Central Highlands. It was included in the Project Tiger in 1992-93.
• It is among the sites notified as Important Bird Areas of India.
• The IBA is a programme of Birdlife International which aims to identify, monitor and protect a global network of IBAs for conservation of the world’s birds and associated diversity.
• It has a contiguous forest cover with Kanha Tiger Reserve and Pench Tiger Reserve (Maharashtra).
• The area of the Pench Tiger Reserve and the surrounding area is the real story area of Rudyard Kipling's famous "The Jungle Book".
• The forests found in Pench Tiger Reserve are divided into three parts: southern tropical wet dry forest, southern tropical dry deciduous teak forest and southern tropical dry deciduous mixed forest.
• The major Carnivores are Tiger, leopard, wild cat, wild dog, hyena, jackal, fox, wolf, weasel, among the vegetarian species, Gaur, Nilgai, Sambar, Chital, Chasinga, Chinkara, Wild Pig etc. are prominent.
• There are a lot of migratory birds seen in the cold season. Among the migratory birds, Ruddy shelduck, Pintail, Whistling Teal and Vegtel etc are prominent.
• It is named after the Pench River that flows through the National Park.
• As per the All India Tiger Estimation Report 2018 (4th Tiger Census), released in July 2019, the Pench Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh has the highest number of tigers in India.

About Tiger Conservation

• The tiger conservation initiative in India is called ‘Project Tiger’, under the administration of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).
• In 2018, MSTrIPES – an application, was used to monitor and record the tiger population to release the census in 2019.