Escaped tiger captured on Mexican side of border, Reynosa mayor says

McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — After nearly a week on the lam, a tiger that had escaped from a zoo in the Mexican border town of Reynosa has been safely captured, Mexican officials announced Tuesday.

The 220-pound Bengal tiger was caught overnight, Reynosa Mayor Carlos Peña Ortiz announced in a Facebook post on the City of Reynosa’s page Tuesday.

“The feline was caught without injuries thanks to the joint work of the Environmental Directorate and Protección Civil y Bomberos Reynosa who set a trap last night,” Peña Ortiz said in the post.

Several government agencies had been working with the Quinta La Fauna zoo stepping up law enforcement patrols and placing traps after the animal escaped from the zoo on Sept. 4.

Officials in South Texas also had been concerned that the animal would cross the Rio Grande.

Photos posted to Facebook by the City of Reynosa show Peña Ortiz posing with zoo officials and others after speaking to Mexican media, and there are pictures of a tiger in a cage lying down that was pulled behind a truck.

Video posted by Tuesday by the Spanish-language newspaper El Mañana de Reynosa on X appears to show the tiger shortly after it was caught. The animal is in an area with high vegetation caught in a cage, growling loudly as a person shines a flashlight on it.

Tigers are nocturnal and mostly active and hunt at night. Traps were set up throughout areas with high vegetation on the southern banks of the Rio Grande where officials had been trying to lure the animal.

The tiger was captured in Los Longoria, a Mexican border community across from Granjeño, Texas, Telemundo 40 in McAllen reported.

“The tiger is in good health and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office for Environmental Protection, PROFEPA, has already been notified. The animal is expected to be transferred to the Victoria City Zoo, where it will receive the specialized care it needs,” the City of Reynosa post says.

Zoo officials noticed the tiger was not in her cage last Wednesday morning and the mesh on the cage was destroyed, according to a news release by Mexican officials.

Officials in South Texas had been worried that the tiger would swim across the Rio Grande and cross the border into the United States.

Tigers can swim up to 7 miles per day, and the Rio Grande is only about 50 yards across at that location. But according to reports, it doesn’t appear the tiger left Mexico.

Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.