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Wages of saving tigers, shrinking forests

Each tiger needs a territory of at least 20 sq km, which they fiercely defend
Last Updated 12 March 2021, 20:21 IST

The Karnataka government has issued orders to shoot down a tiger in Kodagu’s Nagarahole forest region after it killed four people and at least 16 heads of cattle in the past few days. With the forest department and environmentalists taking the easy way out by blaming man-animal conflict on shrinkage of wild habitats due to human encroachment, the real issue has been ignored, resulting in more such encounters. With a healthy population of 125 tigers, which translates to a density of one tiger per about 12 sq km, Nagarahole is said to have reached its ecological carrying capacity.

Each tiger needs a territory of at least 20 sq km, which they fiercely defend. Thus, as the population increases, the older and weaker big cats are edged out of the forest, forcing them to take shelter in bordering estates or villages. The fact that over the years, tigers are being increasingly sighted in coffee plantations is a clear indication that they have begun marking and occupying new territory, something that the authorities have overlooked, leading to the current situation.

A solution has been evasive, as wildlife experts are divided over how to deal with the problem. While one section feels that the tiger population in Nagarahole should be reduced by translocating them to other forest reserves in the country, another is of the view that the entire exercise of tranquilising, transporting and introducing them to alien areas will cause immense trauma to the animals.

Some experts also fault the government’s policy of modifying the habitat to make it conducive to accommodate tigers much beyond the territory’s carrying capacity. According to them, unnecessary interventions in the forest interferes with the natural mortality cycle or survival of the fittest animals, which prevents the natural weeding out of weaker animals. The focus, they say, should be on saving the species as a whole and not individual animals.

The government should take an impassionate view of the ground realities and initiate some concrete steps in the interest of both man and animal. People living in the periphery of forests should regard wildlife as their friends, rather than enemies, but if the authorities continue to brush the real concerns under the carpet, human hostility towards tigers will only increase with each conflict. And given the government’s inability and inertia in responding to animal attacks on time, there could be a situation in which people begin to take law into their hands to protect themselves from predators, negating all the efforts that have gone into tiger conservation so far.

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(Published 12 March 2021, 19:52 IST)

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