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.
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.
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