‘Save the People’ – not the tigers

Press, 6 May 1983, Page 13

‘Save the People’ - not the tigers

By

BRIAN JACKMAN,

“Sunday Times,” London

It is now just over a year since the man-eating tiger of Bangajhala died in Lucknow Zoo. His reign of terror in the Kumaon Hills of Uttar Pradesh ended in August, 1981, when he became the first man-eater ever to be captured alive.

Now the man who caught him, C. B. “Chandra” Singh, field-director of the Corbett tiger reserve, is having second thoughts. For the Bangajhala tiger, man-eater though he was, lived only to die in his prime, behind bars in a small cage. “He died of frustration, lack of freedom, perhaps of a broken heart,” says Chandra Singh, “and I’m beginning to think it’s better to shoot man-eaters rather than capture and incarcerate them. After all, if they are jailed and die of frustration, what is to be gained?" His unanswered question touches on an area of growing debate which is dividing scientists and environmentalists and is a cause of deep resentment among the villagers of Uttar Pradesh. Here in the tigerlands of rural India the man-eater is again a prowling nightmare. Ten years ago, when the tiger was close to extinction, cases of man-eating were rare. At that time India’s entire tiger population had fallen from 40,000 to barely 2000. Since then, such has been the success of the World Wildlife Fund’s “Save the Tiger” campaign, some reserves — including Corbett national park in the Kumaon Hills — have reached saturation point. When that occurs the surplus tigers move out. Then the inevitable happens. People get eaten — and the ensuing backlash once again puts the tiger in peril. Such was the case with the Bangajhala man-eater. Bangajhala, lying just across the Kosi River from Corbett park, is ideal tiger country: a wilderness of sal forest, lantana thickets, and swampy streams.

On March 21,1979, two villagers, Sher Singh and Dev Ram, were returning home on foot, driving a

pack-horse in front of them. As they passed a dense patch of lantana, a tiger sprang from the shadows. The horse bolted with Dev Ram hot on its heels, but Sher Singh was not so lucky. The tiger, which had never killed a man before, dragged him into the bushes and ate him. For a while afterwards there was near-panic in the surrounding villages. But the months passed; there were no more attacks, and the tiger was forgotten. The next victim was Sher Ram, a Forest Department employee, killed on January 19, 1981, as he walked down a forest trail not far from the scene of the previous attack.

Another six months went by. Slowly the people began to relax and forget their fears. Then on June 25, 1981, an old man and a boy went into the Bangajhala forest to collect wild honey. When the boy climbed down from a tree where he had been gathering honeycombs, the old man had disappeared. The man-eater had struck again. This time the panic did not die down and the villagers began to blame Project Tiger, the operation launched by W.W.F. which had transformed the nearby Corbett park into a reserve with the highest density of tigers in theworld. At present the 520 sq km reserve holds close on a hundred tigers, and the population is still growing.

The Project Tiger officials were alarmed. Although the killings had all taken place at least six kilometres outside the park, they were accused of putting tigers before people. Action was needed to stem public outrage. For the local villagers, unimpressed by lofty academic arguments about the need to save endangered species, had set up in opposition to the “Save the Tiger” project. They called the counter-committee “Save the People.” It has only one platform. It wants the surplus tigers shot dead.

The Indian Board of Wildlife, backed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, insisted that problem tigers should be captured rather than killed. Such a policy — admirable in theory — presented Chandra Singh with one major drawback. No-one had ever succeeded in capturing a man-eater alive. Undeterred, Singh began the arduous process of staking out live goats and sitting all night in a tree in the hope of being able to fire a tranquillising dart into the tiger. An iron cage with a trap-door was also dragged into the forest and baited. ' At the end of June the monsoon broke, and for night after fruitless night Singh and his men were soaked to the skin. July passed and, although the bait was often taken, the killer remained free. On August 1, 1981, Singh gave up; but even as his men were breaking camp, a message crackled in over his two-

way radio from the watchers in the forest. The tiger was trapped. Messages were sent ahead to Lucknow Zoo, and the tiger itself, bleeding from the face where it had injured itself trying to escape, was tranquillised for the 40-hour journey. News of ’the capture spread like wildfire. At Lucknow, he was moved to a new cage with a floor of iron sheeting which he immediately shredded as if it were tinfoil, injuring himself in the process. He was then transferred to another cage where again he tried to break out, bending the angle iron and snapping one of his teeth. After that, it seemed that he might settle down to a life of captivity but, by February 1982, the Bangajhala man-eater was dead. Another man-eater, a tigress called Basanti, which was captured in January, 1982, survived him by only one month before she, too, died behind bars at Lucknow.

Today, the zoo is empty of maneaters, but there is no shortage in the forests around the Dudhwa tiger reserve, only 100 miles from the state capital. Here, the maneaters hide in the lush cane fields surrounding the reserve, waiting for the peasants to begin their working day. Since the deaths in captivity of the man-eaters three more natives have been taken and killed.

Chandra Singh is not convinced that these incidents were the work of a man-eater. He says only that they were “accidents.” But among the frightened villagers there is 1 now a gnawing suspicion that the Bangajhala tiger may have had a hungry companion at his side.