I was flipping through the channels one day when I came across a documentary on the Discovery Channel about a tiger that had attacked and killed a girl in a village in the Sundarbans. The villagers were helpless, cut off from the mainland by the surrounding forests and unable to do anything but cower in fear inside their huts as soon as dusk fell.
Investigating officers were sent by the Forest Department, and they quickly narrowed down the suspect-list to three tigers, one of which they’d had their eyes on for quite a while. This tiger had been suspected in at least two other attacks on humans, and the forestry officials were being pressurized to brand it a man-eater and kill it.
But even with evidence against the tiger mounting – its pug-marks, the indentations of its teeth and jaws, its physical attributes and age, all seemed to match those of the tiger that attacked the girl – the conservationists remained stubborn in their refusal to buckle under pressure and call it a man-eater. They would kill a human on less evidence than this, I thought, as I watched in awe while the forest officials battled political and social pressure. This is more humanity than is even shown to humans in our country.
‘The evidence could point to the other two tigers as well’, the officials claimed. ‘And besides there are tigers in the forests that we don’t even know about’.
‘Then kill all three tigers’, ordered the powers-that-be, but by then, even I knew that wasn’t going to happen. They weren’t going to be that unjust to the tigers.
And I, who had expected the officials to come out with all guns blazing, ready to destroy as many animals as necessary to ‘deliver justice’ and placate the villagers, was taken aback that they seemed to be ruthlessly fair to both man and beast. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to eliminate the threat, it was just that they refused to kill indiscriminately, refused to call the tiger a man-eater until they were a 101% sure.
I was puzzled at first – it isn’t normal for the law to be so hesitant about killing one animal. This is the same system of law that supports the killing of thousands of stray dogs every year, because of ‘canine overpopulation’, ironically in a country whose overpopulating humans aren’t going anywhere near extinction. So why forego human arrogance in this case, and think about the animals for once?
But then, I thought, it made sense. In a place with endangered tigers, every single animal is important. Which is not to say that humans are expendable, but who do you think is the victim here? The humans, growing in numbers and spilling over into the territory of the tigers, using up their resources, killing their food, encroaching on their land, destroying their habitats – or the tigers, having to stray farther and farther out of the forest into land which was once their own (and how are they to know it’s not their own anymore?) just so they can get their food and survive?
Anyway, humans are pretty much the last item on the menu that tigers would pick to eat. The tiger that attacked the girl actually dropped her and left after it realized she wasn’t some kind of prey, like a small deer. Only man-eaters have been known to actually stalk and consume people, and genuine man-eaters are rare.
There is no neat ending to this story. No saviour emerged to clear the tiger of all blame. The documentary ended on an ambiguous note – it might have been that tiger and it might not. But one important fact emerged – the Sundarbans officials were not ready to compromise the lives of the tigers without necessity.
Seems like that isn’t the case anymore.
A tiger that recently attacked a woman in Corbett narrowly escaped being shot dead by Uttarakhand officials, and was uprooted from its natural habitat and packed off to a zoo. Similarly, the Uttar Pradesh forest department recently gave arbitrary shoot-at-sight orders as a response to five so-called man-eaters, despite contradictory biological evidence. Not long ago in Tadoba, officials shot down a wrong tiger – a robust male – to appease angry villagers demanding elimination of a tigress accused of serial attacks. In most cases, the local officials’ response to an attack was determined by hasty assumptions, media hype and public pressure, and the top authorities saved their skin by issuing orders to capture or kill the ‘beast’. The only ones losing here were the tigers, but then they didn’t form a viewer-base for the cameras, or a vote bank for the ones pulling the trigger with their pens, now did they?
It’s important to save the humans, but not at the cost of the tigers. There are other ways to solve this problem – how about relocating the humans for a change? There’s nothing wrong with giving humans and tigers equal priority. In fact, as was evident in the documentary I saw, the law certainly provides for it. Now all that’s needed is a little media and public sensitivity.
Some facts about tigers in India
Approximate number of Bengal tigers in the Sundarbans: 500
Number of human attacks by tigers in Sundarbans: 50-250 per year
In 2002, the number of tigers in India was: 3642
In 2008, it was: 1,411
Number of tigers lost since start of 2009: 30 (one every 3 days)
References:
Mazoomdar, Jay. Big Cat is Fair Game. Times of India. (Saturday, March 11, 2009)
“Tiger attacks in the Sunderbans” Wikipedia.com. 29th March. 2009
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