Bihar kills Royal Bengal man-eater tiger; option to rehabilitate opted out
By Shubham Kumar
New Delhi, September 16: A male Royal Bengal Tiger, named T-104, was killed after the three-year old carnivore took the life of nine individuals. The incident is reported from West Champaran which has Valmiki Tiger reserve.
Sporadic, and yet routine, incidents account for horrific scenes as seen recently in Bihar. The fear of the carnivore rose to a degree that the district administration had to order shoot at sight orders for the man-eater following Bihar’s Chief WildLife Warden issuing a death warrant to strike full stop to the fatal menace. While shooters eliminated the Tiger, the clip of the dead beast and people surrounding the carcass are doing rounds on the internet.
Netizens have raised concerns on the crowd surrounding the dead animal. People can be seen ruthlessly pulling away whiskers from the body. Notably, Bollywood actor Randeep Hooda has also shared the video on Twitter and has questioned the treatment given to the ‘national animal’. India has been urbanising at an unprecedented pace. The underlying opportunities to advance urban and more ‘modern’ lifestyle are manifold. The drive to advance urbanism is mostly accompanied by man-animal conflicts.
For centuries, spiritual thinkers and now rational ecologists and conservationist have warned us against the dangers of the humanitarian encroachments into the nature and especially wildlife.
An uproar, as it happens over Twitter and internet, seems to have emerged. Little decluttering is warranted in this regard and is precisely attempted here. With around fifty tigers safely located at the Valmiki Tiger reserve, officials from the Forest Department claim that the tiger was ‘abnormal’. They narrate, interestingly, that while the mother and sibling of the beast continue to reside within the confines of the reserve, the deceased tiger had scent-marked sugarcane fields nearby as its territory where it was born. Furthermore, they add that the tiger was killing humans without any provocation.
The carnivorous cat had dragged a 12-year-old girl from her house and left her dead in the fields nearby. There was, however, no harm done to the cow tied outside the house. It is important to note, here, that the lone tiger reserve in the state has around a dozen villages located around it. This geographic proximity makes them the hotspots of human-animal conflict with the recent episode only highlighting the extremities.
While Forest officials claim that a comprehensive search party was deployed extensively to patrol the region surrounding the reserve for about 27 days, people have raised concerns over the absence of compliance to established guidelines and protocols.
Standard Operating Procedures, in this regard, have been issued by National Tiger Conservation Authority. The Standard Operating Procedure for Disposing the Tiger/Leopard Carcass/Body Parts and Standard Operating Procedure to Deal with Emergency Arising Due to Straying of Tigers in Human Dominated Landscapes give responsibility of enforcing the procedures to Field Director for tiger reserves. The overall responsibility, as per the prescribed procedures, for the state rests with Chief Wildlife Warden of the concerned state.
Furthermore, the formation of a committee is recommended and in cases where experts from the Wildlife Institute of India cannot be reached, a local expert and his suggestions are mandated. It is important to note here that the detailed SOPs envision a sensitised district administration wherein the DM and police machinery invoke article 144 to avoid the gathering of crowd. SOPs, however, give way to Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 when a large carnivore, as the case here, is declared a habitual man-eater. During incineration of the carcass, presence of the Field Director or in case of exigency an Authorized Officer not below the rank of Deputy Conservator of Forests besides the Post-mortem (PM) Team having representation from the civil society institution is warranted and video-recording and photographic recording of the complete procedure is called for.
In this light, the presence of hundreds of villagers around the carcass raises eyebrows. The failure of district administration in this regard is evident. A whopping 300 forest and administrative officials are reported to have gathered around and still whiskers were snatched away for the world to see. While the compliance of SOPs needs a detailed review, the abject failure of India’s wildlife management stand showcased.
SOPs openly call for spreading awareness among the locals but nothing of the sort appears to have made its way into the masses. Regulating the Tiger Hunting in 1924, colonial documents instruct “To the long whiskers all sorts of magic are imputed, and care must be taken that they are not removed at the first opportunity by the natives”.
While the state seems affixed in celebrating the gains of Project Tiger, little transformation seems evident in popular approach. In a telephonic conversation, Pankaj Kshirsagar, a wildlife enthusiast from Madhya Pradesh, highlights the widening human-animal conflict in the region. The role of NGOs and civil society groups are crucial in pacifying the confrontations that are slated to increase with the passing time. He places primacy in striking a balance in times “where conflicts are inevitable, and we have to fight for the oppressed side and Tigers, against rapid human encroachments and insensitivity, are the victims”.
(Author is interning with Public Policy Research Centre)
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