10/13/2026
In June 2019, as the monsoon rains began, a young male tiger walked out of Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in Maharashtra, India. Researchers had fitted him with a GPS collar that February. For four months he had stayed near the forest where he was born. Then he left, and the dots on their map started to move.
They kept moving for months. The collar logged more than 5,000 locations as he crossed forests, farm fields, rivers, streams and highways. He was one of three cubs born in the sanctuary in 2016, and he had yet to claim a territory of his own. So where would a young tiger even go?
Researchers say much of India's good tiger habitat is already occupied, so young tigers have to keep exploring until they find room. Wildlife officials nicknamed him Walker, and he lived up to it. By December 1 he had covered more than 800 miles and reached Dnyanganga Wildlife Sanctuary, also in Maharashtra. He did not stay put.
Few people ever saw him. The collar showed a tiger that rested by day and walked at night, and apart from a few isolated cattle kills, scientists recorded no major conflict with people. Those kills made villagers nervous. So what made that route possible?
The answer lies between protected areas. Corridors are strips of forest, farm and riverbank that link one sanctuary to another, and Walker's collar data fed the first long-term study in India to map them from real tiger movements. Bilal Habib, a senior biologist at the Wildlife Institute of India, said the walk shows rural Maharashtra can still work for tigers despite development.
By March 2020, officials said, he had settled in Dnyanganga, a sanctuary of about 79 square miles where he was the only tiger. In all he had walked about 1,860 miles, the longest tiger walk recorded in India.
The collar's battery was fading and Walker was outgrowing it, which made it a choking risk. In late March 2020, the team triggered a remote release. A video shows him lying on the ground, then jumping up in surprise as it fell away.
If a tiger can cross this much farmland unseen, what would it take to keep those routes open for him and safe for the people who live along them?
Sources: BBC News / Agence France-Presse / Smithsonian Magazine / Outlook India
(This photo is used for illustrative purposes only.)
