About the Blog

My blog post are of varied topics ranging from personal experiences, travel, wild life photographs, interesting news, of happenings around the world that catches my fancy. In other words i write about anything when i am in a mood to write

Friday, April 28, 2017

Does an endangered tiger deserve this inspite being a national animal !!!



This is a common topic of discussions these days and i am not an expert but a wild life lover who is frustrated and angry with the happening in our country with scant respect being shown to the endangered National animal Tiger . When a death of a Tiger  is reported there are flurry of activities by wildlife lovers and conservationists trying to get the relevant authorities to investigate the deaths and punish the people responsible in the event these deaths are unnatural.But then the government departments are just not bothered to do in depth investigations into the matter and this does frustrates most wild life lovers and the reactions can be seen on the social media networks. We did have a twitter storm to various government official to introduce accountability and stricter laws to protect these endangered tiger since it is not prevailing now.

Just couple of weeks back a well known and most photographed tiger of Bandipur named Prince was found dead and the FD initially gave out a statement that the tiger had died due to old age and starvation but kept the identity of the tiger shrouded. Wild life enthusiast delved deeper to find the identity of this tiger and finally when they were able to match the stripes they found it was the Prince. Body images given to the media did not tell the whole story as the face of the tiger was covered and it was then noticed by one wildlife reported that the tigers snout was missing and this led to protest by wildlife lovers at Bangalore demanding investigation into this matter and for having more transparencies in reporting findings of such deaths of the national animal. Finally the culprits to this gruesome cutting of the tiger snout were arrested and three canines of the tiger recovered from them.

Recent finding of tiger Shrinivas’s body buried in a farm land outskirts of Tadoba is sending shockwaves among the wildlife lovers and conservationists. He was the son of the legendary tiger Jai from UKWLS who has gone missing now for over a year and is suspected to be poached though there has been sporadic reporting of having been sighted in various parts of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh & Telengana. If a radio collared tiger is able to be killed by electrocution just imagine the fate of other tigers from the core forests that are not monitored at all. We may never get to know the true count of mortality of our national animal. The government agency NTCA claims that there have been only 9 deaths in the month of April 2017 however the record maintained by CLAW of the reported deaths from all parts of India stands at 14 tiger deaths this month.




In fact there are many more deaths of tigers that have taken place but has not been reported to the authorities and the reason I say this is because I read the following post on the CLAW portal wherein a member states that in the last 6 months three full grown tigers have been killed by truckers in Kaali Ghat section that connects Chalisgaon to Aurangabad …. See the screenshot of that post and the author is desperately trying to get in touch with concerned authorities to save a tigress with two cubs. Hats off to such wildlifers.. in a small way he is making an attempt to help saving the tiger.  

 There are so many tigers missing from the various regions and as their bodies / body parts are not found are not listed at dead. I did write about this last year too and you can read it here .There has been a recent case where one Tiger by named Ookan went missing from Tadoba in 2012 has been found this year in March 2017 hale and healthy nearly 100 kms away from where he was last sighted. This does bring cheer to wild lifers but this is one off case that was solved on the list of these missing tiger. The balance of the missing tigers may be dead with the bodies being hidden by perpetrators in fear of being convicted or the body parts have already been exported out of India.

  

Coming back to the death of Shrinivas , the farmer confessed that the electrified  fence he had put around the farm had killed the tiger but this does not account for the injured paw. Farmer stated that he removed the radio collar and threw it away from his farm and buried the body. The department states that it was due to the radio collar they were able to trace the last known location of Shrinivas and on intense search found the body.



The images of the body being dug out tells it all ... such an pathetic end to a magnificent animal.The arrested farmer has already got bail as per the post I read on social media. This is the kind of punishment one gets for killing a national animal that is endangered and it just shows how helpless we wild life lovers are. A strict punishment may have deterred others who think of poaching animals but with this sort of ruling they would hardly think twice before poaching… for they can get away with murder.



 
 I sincerely hope that the Government of India wakes up to the reality of the situation prevailing in the ground with respect to the endangered national animal instead of thinking all is fine by reading the reports of pencil pushers, who only make reports that are flowery to make on International symposiums or for the matter of getting funds.

PS: Image & post courtesy – CLAW portal on facebook. & Dhananjay Kumar
CLAW- Please revert back if you feel the same is inappropriate so that i can withdraw the blog.