Machali, thought to be world’s oldest wild tiger and known for serene bearing, dies in Rajasthan national park aged about 20

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The “Queen mother” of royal Bengals, thought to be the oldest surviving tiger in the wild, has died in a northern Indian national park.

Machali, aged about 20, was the star attraction of the Ranthambore national park and one of the most photographed tigers in the world.

Local media had been reporting on the animal’s declining health in recent days after she was discovered semi-conscious and starving on the fringes of the popular Rajasthan nature reserve.

“We were trying to provide her treatment but she died. It was a natural death linked to her age,” Ranthambore tiger project director Yogesh Kumar Sahu told Agence France-Presse.

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About half the tigers in Ranthambore are descended from Machali, named after the Hindi word for fish for her distinctive facial markings.

Her exact age is unknown, but she was first spotted in 1997 and quickly became popular among tourists for her serene bearing and dominance among the park’s tigers, which officially number about 61.

The “Lady of the Lakes” featured on postage stamps and wildlife documentaries and helped spark the revival of Ranthambore, but her legend was sealed when an amateur video captured her wrestling a 14ft Indian crocodile.

But such battles took their toll, injuring Machali’s teeth and compromising her ability to hunt. In her final years, park authorities would reportedly tie calves and other prey to trees to feed the animal, whose celebrity is thought to have generated US$10m (£7.6m) in tourism for the national park, according to conservation group Travel Operators for Tigers.

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Another iconic Indian tiger, Jai, is feared to have been poached after disappearing on 18 April from the Umred Karhandla wildlife sanctuary near Nagpur in central India. Two suspected poachers were detained from near where the seven-year-old was last spotted, according to the Hindustan Times.

Bengals, an endangered species, usually live between 10 and 15 years in the wild. Conservation efforts since the 1990s have stabilised the fall in their numbers and more than 2,500 are thought to survive across south Asia and China.

Poaching has recently re-emerged as a serious threat to India’s tiger populations, an April census reporting that 28 of them had been killed this year so far – more than the entire number poached in 2015.