A tiger spotted after an eight-year gap could have helped uncover timber ‘depots’ deep inside India’s easternmost tiger reserve.

On March 14, officials in Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang district found several illegal timber depots in the core area of the 1,985 sq. km Namdapha National Park and Tiger Reserve.

Park officials bumped into the illegal logging activities while trying to find out why a tiger came out of the core area of the reserve after so many years.

The tiger was caught on cameras set up near the park’s Deban Forest Inspection Bungalow, after forest guards reported some pugmarks on January 31.

It was the second tiger spotted in Namdapha after one in 2015.

“There are reasons to believe that the logging activities may have forced the tiger out of the dense, core area of Namdapha towards the bungalow, which is close to a 157-km road from Miao to Vijaynagar through a large stretch of the park,” a forest official said, declining to be quoted.

The office of Namdapha’s field director is at Miao, a sub-divisional town. Vijaynagar, close to the Myanmar border, is Changlang’s remotest circle headquarters.