Jaipur: There are growing fears over the fate of Machli, the celebrated tigress of Ranthambore National Park, who continues to be missing after she was last spotted on January 9 in zone 5 of the park. Despite several trap cameras all over the park and several teams sent out to track the 17-year-old tigress, forest authorities are clueless about the whereabouts of the world’s most photographed striped cat. “We have put five trap cameras in the area where she moves and her pugmarks were spotted two days back. She is very much alive and we will get good news in a day or so,” said the park’s divisional forest officer (DFO) Rahul Bhatnagar. Machli, who got her name from the fish-shaped marking on the left part of her face, is reported to be the world’s longest living tigress in the wild. “Machli is a very old tigress and often had the habit of going missing for days. So far we don’t know whether she is alive. She generally stayed around zone 4 &5 of the park and did not have a history of territorial fights. I last saw her around Christmas when she killed a spotted deer on her own,” said Balendu Singh, wildlife warden (honorary) for Ranthambhore. There are fears that the frail tigress may not surface again. But her star status in the tiger world and the countless stories about her will ensure that she’s remembered for a long time. Her legendary fight with a 14-feet-long crocodile created history, being the first time that such an encounter was recorded. Machli is the subject of several documentaries and short films. Many books have been written on her and she even received the TOFT Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to conservation and the wider economy of Rajasthan. It was observed by TOFT that for 10 years till 2012, $10 million per annum were added to the local economy of Ranthambore due to Machli. A commemorative postal cover on her was issued last September, adding to the legend of the tigress. “Machli is a living wonder. The average life of a tiger in the wild is around 12 years. A tigress generally lives for a shorter time because of the hardship of rearing cubs. But Machli lives on. She has lost all her canines but still does not look old. She always retained the majesty and grace of the ‘Lady of the Lakes’, a title given to her when she ruled the lake area of Ranthambore. But when her daughter T17, Sundari, grew up, Machli relinquished her lake-territory to her and shifted to Lakarda,” said Dharmendra Khandal of NGO Tiger Watch. Machli delivered four different litters and raised them successfully to maturity. In all, she gave birth to nine cubs between 2000 and 2006 — four males and five females. Of them, six including T1 and T18 were translocated to Sariska in 2008-09 (recoded ST2 and ST3) and are still alive. More than half the tiger population of Rajasthan’s two tiger reserves, Ranthambore and Sariska, are Machli’s lineage. Two female cubs of Machli were introduced to repopulate Sariska.