A fresh wave of anxiety has swept through Granby village in Idukki, nestled within the sprawling POABS Group tea plantations. This comes after a recent tiger sighting by a plantation worker named Soumya on Friday. Following her alert, Forest Department officials promptly deployed two camera traps to monitor the elusive big cat.
The incident has left plantation workers deeply unsettled, with many now hesitant to return to their duties. They point to the overgrown, uncultivated sections of the plantation as ideal hiding spots for wild animals, contributing to the escalating sense of danger.
However, initial checks of the newly installed camera traps yielded no immediate sign of the tiger, according to Erumeli Forest Range Officer K. Harilal. He confirmed that the department plans to install more cameras in different locations, acknowledging that the dense undergrowth in uncultivated plantation areas indeed contributes to wild animals encroaching on human settlements.
Harilal also noted that the presence of cattle grazing freely in the tea plantations acts as a strong lure for predators like tigers, offering them easy prey. The Forest Department has previously recommended ‘stall feeding’ – keeping cattle confined and fed – within cluster homes to mitigate this risk and reduce human-wildlife encounters.
In response to these pressing concerns, Shaji Pynadathu, General Secretary of the Kerala Plantation Workers Union (INTUC), announced that the union would actively press the company to clear the overgrown fallow land. Ouseph KD, HR & IR Manager at POABS Enterprises Private Limited, attributed the dense vegetation to the repeated absence of workers, stating that once employees resume work, the company can proceed with clearing the wild overgrowth.
This isn’t the first time Granby has faced such a threat. On March 17, a tiger that had ventured into nearby Aranakkallu was tracked and unfortunately killed by a Kerala Forest Department team. Additionally, in May, a deceased female tiger was discovered at Rajamudy, also near Granby. Preliminary investigations at the time suggested its death was likely caused by a snake bite, highlighting the constant presence of wildlife in the region.