18 percent of the tiger deaths in 2014 were due to poaching: MoEF

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70 percent of the wild tigers remaining in the world are found in India

Though the latest tiger population estimates in India point to an increase in the population of striped cats in the country, situation is far from safe for these big cats, shows the tiger mortality data from 2014. According to the data on tiger mortality from last year, 18 percent of the total tiger deaths in the country were due to confirmed cases of poaching. 75 per cent of the remaining cases of tiger deaths, authorities have not ruled out poaching as the cause.

No more ‘official’ hunting of straying tigers, NTCA comes out with standard protocol

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The martyrdom of the Wayanad tiger and a similar incident of officials shooting a strayed tiger in Maharashtra, has urged the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to come out with a Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) to handle conflict situations in which a strayed carnivore like tiger of leopard are involved.

Image Courtesy: WWF

While clearly forbidding the shooting of strayed carnivores, the SOP addresses many critical issues like mob control, the need to distinguish a man eater from a straying carnivore and standard procedures for capturing and transferring the animal in detail.

To make sure the situation is handled properly, the SOP suggests constituting a committee with nominees of the Chief Wildlife Warden, NTCA along with a veterinarian, local NGO representative, local panchayat representative and field director to carry out the decision making process. The SOP also suggests that a wildlife expert should be involved in the ongoing monitoring operations in such conflict situations.

Distinguish man eaters from a mere cattle lifter, before shooting it

A straying carnivore should not be shot, if it is not a man-eater, directs the SOP.  “Under no circumstances, a tiger should be eliminated by invoking the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, if it is not habituated for causing human death.” it says. It also urges to stick to traps and chemical immobilization to capture the animal.

“Elimination of a tiger / leopard as a ‘man-eater’ should be the last option, after exhausting the option of capturing the animal live. The Chief Wildlife Warden of the State after the due diligence should record in writing the reasons for declaring the tiger / leopard as a ‘man-eater’” says the guideline.

Often, carnivores straying into human inhabited area are mistaken for a man eater, even without enough evidence. To avoid such cases, the SOP annexure directs officials to distinguish attacks from a habitual man-eater from incidents of accidental lethal encounters with a straying carnivore.

“As most of our forests outside protected areas are right burdened, the probability of chance encounters is very high.  Further, tigers often use agriculture / sugar cane field, ….. ...which may also cause lethal encounters with human beings.  Such animals should not be declared as ‘man-eaters’.  However, confirmed habituated tiger / leopard which ‘stalk’ human beings and feed on the dead body are likely to be ‘man-eaters’”, says the SOP annexure.

In the Wayanad incident, a cattle lifting tiger was shot down by officials, by invoking section 11 of the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 which allows killing habitual man eating tigers. To curb such instances, the SOP annexure clearly directs that in no circumstances, a mere cattle lifting carnivore be declared a man eater, just because it has ventured into human inhabited places.  

The new guidelines also stress on confirming the identity of the animal as early as possible. The guidelines direct the authorities to compare camera trap pictures, pug mark information to identify the animal. Camera traps can be set up near the kills and pressure impression pads (PIPs) can be put up in the area to confirm the identity of the animal and to track down its pattern of movement, says the guidelines.

Use Section 144 for mob control

Uncontrollable mobs are often the biggest challenge in rescuing a straying animal in India. In the Wayanad incident, officials were forced to shoot the tiger due to the presence of an agitated mob. The same factor has killed many straying leopards in parts of India.

To avoid such instances, the new guidelines suggest wildlife officials to proactively seek the help of district law and order authorities right from the beginning of the conflict situation and to clamp down Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code which bans the grouping of more than five people in public places. “In all instances of wild carnivores like tiger  / leopard straying into a human dominated landscape, the district authorities need to ensure law and order by imposing section 144 of the Cr.Pc.”, says the guideline.

Front Page of NTCA SOP

Usually, tigers keep their kill in hide outs to eat later, which often helps to track down the animal and even to capture them. But often this is interrupted in conflict areas. In Wayanad incident, outraged public snatched the carcass of the killed live stock to put up road block protests. This has caused the hungry animal to lift more cattle in the run. Interestingly, the NTCA guidelines also suggest guarding the kill in cattle lifting incidents, in such a way that it won’t distract or disturb the carnivore. The suggestion also aims to avoid revenge poisoning, which is a usual incident in human-animal conflict areas. In a recent incident, a tiger died when villagers poisoned the kill in Nagarhole Tiger Reserve.

Stop rumour mills

Rumour mills have played a major role in worsening the situation in Wayanad as in similar cases by causing unnecessary panic among the people. To check such instances, the guideline directs the authorities to deploy an official spokesperson to regularly update the media regarding the progress of the rescue operation. 

“An authorized spokesperson of the Forest Department, should periodically update the media (if required) to prevent dissemination of distorted information relating to the operation / incidents,” says the guideline.  On a similar line, the guideline also discourages giving unnecessary publicity to blown up tiger population figures. “The minimum tiger numbers based on Individual tiger captures (in areas where camera trap monitoring is going on), should not be given undue publicity without due cross checking with the NTCA”, says the guideline.

Use traps and chemical immobilization

Once repeated instances of cattle lifting or attack on humans are confirmed, automatic closure traps should be set up in strategic areas after collecting enough information on the movement of the animal, suggests NTCA. If repeated attempts of trapping the animal fail, the guidelines suggest immobilizing it chemically using sedation darts with the help of experts and vets.

A Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) under captivity

According to the guideline, recommended drugs can be injected to the animal by projecting 3 to 5 ml capacity lightweight plastic darts of 38 to 40 mm length and a needle with 1.5 mm to 2 mm diameter, using compressed gas or CO2 propelling device. The animal can be approached in vehicles or on trained elephants or can be darted from raised platforms. It is always preferable to target the hindquarters of the animal for darting. The guideline also suggests that the animal should bee kept in close observation with minimal disturbance during the induction phase (the period between injecting the drug and the animal turning immobile.)

Transferring the captured carnivore

If the captured tiger is healthy or young, with no serious incapacitation, it should be released to a suitable habitat with enough prey base after radio collaring it, suggest thee guideline. A captured tiger should not be released to the territory of another tiger. If the tiger is incapacitated, it should be sent to a recognized zoo, says the guidelines. It also says that a confirmed man-eating carnivore, once captured, should not be released back to the forest.

The Chief Wildlife Warder of the state will be responsible for making the decision of releasing the animal back to the wild or of transferring it to a zoo.

Do we need a tiger reserve in Wayanad ? Loud thoughts as the straying tiger gunned down

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So the tiger in Wayanad  is dead. 

But beware; more than 60 of them are still lurching inside the forest.
Now, some recap.

The curious case of the cruel tiger

Usually wounds or similar issues which make a tiger incapable of finding food on its own force it to look for easier preys like cattle . In the case of Wayanad tiger, the postmortem report is still to come out to understand if it had any such wounds which forced it to hunt down the cattle. (Usually poaching is a major reason which causes such wounds. The instances are not very rare in Wayanad and adjoining forest areas in nearby states.). 

Image Courtesy: WWF

However, it was 12 years of age, which makes it less capable of hunting on the forest folk on its own.A possible case of a old cat looking for cattle for food.

 The standard procedure of trapping man-eating of cattle hunting tigers of leopards, right from the time of Corbett, is to leave the carcass of the cattle intact, to trap or shoot the killer when it comes back to it.

However, in Wayanad case, the tiger was rarely allowed to get its kill which was furiously taken away by the people to stage up blockades the National Highway. It was terrifically starved, so it killed more. Despite its frustration, it never attacked people, even if many (including school children) were trapped in its front, while it was starved for days. (Not out of respect or sympathy, but out of fear. Wild cats fear human a lot. They attack only when left with no other option.)

The classical cases of crisis management by Kerala forest authorities

Lack of crisis management from the state and forest authorities made the case worst.

The unruly mob was the single cause of death of the tiger which was getting sedated due to the tranquilizer shots. According to experts, the tiger, after shot with a tranquilizer dart of enough ketamine dosage, should be left free for at least 30 minutes, to sedate down. It will show violent behavior during the period but will sedate gradually. But instead of leaving the animal free, the, mob surrounded it in Wayanad incident, exposing themselves to danger and forcing the officials to shoot the animal. 

 

Majority of the leopards or similar animals straying into the human inhabited areas in Kerala have their fate sealed, since the mob has its own way of stoning them to death even if the forest officials manage to get the animals trapped. Desperately, the department has issued stricter circulars on the need to stick to scientific methods while rescuing wild animals straying into human inhabited areas.  But the crisis management plan of Kerala forest department (if they have any) still lacks the basic procedure of mob control. 

Here too, the authorities should not have let the people go loose just like that in such a situation, not only for the safety of the people and officials, but also for the poor animal.

What happens if the tiger reserve comes up in Wayanad ?

One Tiger = several cattle
One Tiger Reserve = More tigers 

More Tigers = More cattle and other issues

This is the popular mathematics used by the politicians in Kerala time and again to instill fear in the public. A tiger reserve will surely bring up more tigers, so more menace. That’s it.

But, Wayanad is not going to have the first tiger reserve in the state, if it is proposed to be. Kerala already have two tiger reserves, Parambikulam and Periyar. How many reports have popped about the horrid menace done by tigers to the people living around these forests in recent years?

Mass eviction   

Scaremongers sing that the reserve will bring eviction of hundreds of families, a clamp down on commercial, construction activities, a carpet ban on agriculture and what not. In short, human settlements will be razed down for the useless tigers. 

There are hundreds of families still living inside the buffer zone of other tiger reserves in the state. Let alone that, four villages with hundreds of inhabitants are there in Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan.

According to a forest official, who would like not to be named, the inhabitants who happen to be inside the buffer area of a tiger reserve may decide to leave the place with ample compensation from NTCA or can decide to stay with all chances of getting compensated for the crop loss or similar damages caused in the human animal conflict. Similarly, there are no such carpet ban on agriculture or other activities, except certain minimal regulations on construction of dams, linear structures etc.

Now, what if a tiger reserve does not come up in Wayanad?

The latest data on the population of the big cat in the state which is yet to be released shows that Wayanad has at least 70 mature tigers and 10 cubs in its forests. That is pretty good numbers than many of the so called ‘tiger reserves’ in the country and possibly, better than other protected forest areas in the world. 

Presently, the forest department in Kerala is in pretty bad shape when it comes to allocation of funds for conservation purpose, let alone the efforts to bring down human animal conflict. Sources at the forest department in the state itself, on condition of anonymity, admits that the lack of funds really affect the activities of the department. 

According to an answer tabled by MoEF at the Rajyasabha on November ^27th, Kerala has got more than 14 crore rupees (1476.518 Lakhs) since 2010 for conservation of big cats in the state. But not a single paisa from that money which was sanctioned by National Tiger Conservation Authority has reached Wayanad since it is not a tiger reserve yet, despite the higher population of tigers. 

Funds released to Kerala under Project Tiger Since 2010 ( amount in Lakhs)
Source: MoEF

Instead, if the area is turned into a tiger reserve, the department will have enough central funds, to implement scientifically approved measures to bring down the human animal conflict like fencing and other measures. 

The case of the people around the reserve will not be as pathetic as today where they get a nominal amount of compensation or just statements from politicians on possible compensation, since the compensation procedure is standardized and better with NTCA.

If the sanctuary is not turned into a tiger reserve, the forest department will find it difficult to implement enough mitigation measures to avoid any conflict between the high populations of tigers in the area.

Above all, tigers are costly

India spends crores of rupees from the tax payer money every year to conserve the striped big cats of the country since it is among the rare places in the world with favorable habitats and a viable population of this endangered animal. According to WWF, we have lost 97 percent of world’s tiger population in 100 years.

Obviously, a tiger costs very much, in nature. If you don’t care about that, you should understand that, a tiger costs crores of tax payers money. Whomever responsible for shooting and killing a tiger when there is enough chances of rescuing it, is thus answerable to the tax payer.

Tigers switch to night life to avoid human interference in Chitwan National Park, Nepal

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shortened URL for this story: http://goo.gl/j89Ch

Contrary to the widespread belief that threatened carnivores and human beings cannot co-exists using the same spatial locations, a new study from the neighboring country of Nepal shows that a large carnivore- the globally endangered tiger- do adapt to such situations and even takes a night shift to co-exist in a place frequented by human beings.

Panthera tigris

A camera trap study done by researchers at the Michigan State University in USA, Institute for Social and Environmental Research and Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation in Nepal at the Chitwan National Park in 2010 to 2011 found that tigers changed their spatiotemporal activities to avoid human detection.

According to the study, humans, vehicles and tigers were all using the same roads through the forests for their routine explorations during the period. However, to avoid the human presence, tigers restricted their movement through the overlapping routes to night when human activity was very low.

“In contrast to the general belief, we found that tigers and people frequently co-occurred at fine scales both inside and outside the park in both years,” point out the researchers in the paper which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Major findings

The study which put camera traps in different parts of the national park found that despite the heightened human activity during the day time, the tiger density at the study site was greater than that of similar sites in the neighboring India and other South East Asian countries where human intervention on tiger reserves are very low.

They have also found that a 20 percent increase in the human density in the locality does not affect the tiger density at the Chitwan National Park which is considered as one among the few tiger reserves in the world that can support more than 25 breeding female tigers. 

A tiger photographed by the camera trap
Image Courtesy: CSIS

It has also found that the tigers in the study area in Chtiwan were one sixth less active than their counterparts in tiger reserves of other South East Asian countries were human activity is controlled. Moreover, there was a 55 percent increase in the presence of local residents in the study area, which according to the paper, has caused the tigers to avoid small trails used by locals as well as to keep themselves to the inner forest areas of the park, bringing the tiger density inside the park more during the last year of study.

However, the study also points out that the presence of high prey base and low levels of poaching also helped the co-existence of human beings and the tigers in the area. Interestingly, it found that the prey base was increased after the implementation of conservation oriented policies due to increase in the biomass as well as reforestation of the areas outside the park. 

Human density near tiger reserves, a different view

The new study contradicts the basic rationale of many conservation programs which focus on evacuating human settlements from protected areas fearing human-animal conflicts and adverse effect on threatened organisms.

Instead, the study supports the idea that effective curbing of poaching is the key to increasing tiger density, than restricting human density in a protected area. “Our findings affirm the notion that effective management policies, such as those policies that improve habitat conditions and lower exploitation, are more important to tiger conservation than human density per se”, says the study.

Moreover, the study provides a ray of hope at a point of time when earth is getting crowded with the rapidly expanding human population shrinking the forest habitats. 

19 tiger-deaths in Corbett National Park since 2008 says MoEF, but NTCA disagrees

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Despite being the national animal, tiger deaths have no clear records in the country
Image: Indian Biodiversity Talks

According to an official replay tabled in the upper house (Rajya Sabha) of Indian Parliament by Environment and Forests Minister Jayanti Natarajan, there have been 19 tiger deaths in Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand since 2008.

NTCA Map showing tiger mortality in Uttarakhand in 2011

However, the official database of National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) on tiger mortality does not agree with it. The database which records instances of tiger mortality all over the country from 2009 onwards shows that there were 20 tiger deaths in and around the Corbett National Park since 2009 itself. Thus, the statistics presented by the ministry and the NTCA database are at logger heads when it comes to the number of tiger deaths in Corbett National Park.

As per the statistics given in the annexure of the replay tabled by the minster, there has been one tiger death in 2008 in the park while it was 6 in 2009, 2 in 2010, 7 in 2011 and 3 in 2012 respectively. However, NTCA database shows that there were 6 deaths in 2009, 2 in 2010, 9 in 2011 and 3 in 2012.

Moreover, according the reply from MoEF, there have been only two instances of poaching from Corbett national park during the period, on each in 2008 and 2011. However, according to NTCA database, there were no tiger deaths due to poaching in 2011.

Tiger deaths in Uttarakhand 

According to the statistics compiled by NTCA, there have been 39 tiger deaths in different parts of Uttarakhand from January 2009 to August 23^rd this year. There have been 9 tiger deaths in the state in 2009 among which 6 were from Corbett National Park. The figures were 5 and 2 in 2010 and 17 and 9 in 2011. This year, there have been 8 tiger deaths from the state of Uttarakhand till August end, out of which 3 were from Corbett National Park.

Tiger Deaths in Uttarakhand from 2009
Graphics by Indian Biodiversity talks
source : Tigernet

The minister has informed the Rajya Sabha that the tiger deaths in the national park during the period have been caused by both natural and other reasons. The minster’s reply to Rajya Sabha also made it clear that the country has an estimated total tiger population of 1706, as per the data collected by the population census carried out every four years.

Though it is not immediately clear what caused the figures differ and which one is correct,  it is sad to see that the country does not have clear records on the mortality of a critically endangered animal which happens to be its national animals.