Panna, May 25: No female tiger has been spotted in the Panna Tiger Reserve during the past six months sparking fears of the animal being wiped out from the tiger reserve.

Tiger sightings have become rare in the park and a male tiger is spotted once in a while.

Panna National Park Founder and former MP Lokendra Singh expressed apprehensions that no female tiger was present in the reserve.

He described the imbalance as dangerous and said the government must take effective steps to control this imbalance in time.

Mr Singh wrote a letter to Forest Minister Kunwar Vijay Shah recently about the present situation of the park. A copy of the letter was also sent to the Principal Wildlife Conservator.

According to Mr Singh, when tiger census was carried out by the Wildlife Institute of India in Panna reserve, female tiger was no longer present here.

In the letter, Mr Singh pointed out that a tiger was taken from Kanha National Park and let off in Van Vihar where a similar problem was noticed. The same experiment must be carried out in Panna.

Mr Singh said the park director had sent a similar report to the Centre and the Madhya Pradesh Government.

The number of tigers in the park had been in controversy since past five years.

Wildlife expert Raghu Chundawat, who had carried out research in the Panna reserve for a long time, had claimed in 2002 that 22 tigers were missing from the park. At that time, the park management denied this claim.

Meanwhile, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has approved rpt approved a plan to increase the number of tigresses in Madhya Pradesh's Panna Tiger reserve where they are outnumbered by their male counterparts, leaving little choice for mating for the latter.

"The NTCA has recently approved a proposal to introduce wild tigress from the nearby tiger parks to the Panna region spread over Vindhyan Range of the Northern states," authority's member secretary Rajesh Gopal said here.