Tiger mortality in the country has reached an alarming proportion — 110 in 2016 so far — the highest during the last five years.
Forty three of these cases are of poaching and seizures, much higher than 26 such cases registered during the whole of last year.
This is as per the statistics from Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), a NGO working on wildlife crime enforcement. Accordingly, seizures include 225 kilograms of tiger bones, 15 skins, 56 kilograms of meat, besides claws, whiskers, skull and fat of the animal.
Uttarakhand, which shares its borders with Nepal, reported of the highest seizures with 150 kilograms of tiger bones and six skins. Maximum cases of 25 tiger deaths were reported from Madhya Pradesh. These include seven cases of poaching. Thirty two tigers were “found dead” this year — a category that includes mortality due to unexplained circumstances, disease or old age.
Cases of infighting have also gone up to 22 as compared to 17 last year. Three tigers were shot dead or killed in various instances of man tiger conflicts and same number died in road and train accidents.
Incidentally, tiger mortality occurred more in protected areas and not in territorial forest divisions raising serious questions on the country’s anti-poaching efforts.
“The figures are indeed alarming”, said Tito Joseph, Programme Manager, WPSI.
“Poaching can be controlled only when we have coordinated, intelligence-led enforcement actions. This needs to be coupled with target oriented monitoring,” he added.
It has been found that poachers mostly operate in specific areas, where they strike again and again.
“Hence, the key to trapping them is updating our intelligence efforts by way of gathering information on the respective poaching networks and following up on the status and activities of poachers. It is after all a fight against an organised, transnational crime syndicate, which are well aware of the functioning of the forest,” Tito said.
In a shocking case, an adult tiger was electrocuted last week at Central Chanda Forest Division under Chandrapur district of Maharashtra. The tiger carcass was located with the help of a dog squad and exhumed from a three-feet-deep pit from an agricultural field.
Seven people have been arrested for burying the tiger and not informing the authorities.
In another case, the carcass of a 7-year-old tiger was found by a forest patrol team in Bandhavgarh tiger reserve in Panpatha area of the buffer zone on Friday last.
According to reports, the big cat had died two to three days ago due to electrocution.
This is the fifth tiger death in Bandhavgarh and twenty fifth in Madhya Pradesh this year. The majority of 19 tiger deaths have been reported from Pench and Kanha tiger reserves. While nine tigers have died in Kanha so far this year, ten died in Pench.
In March-April this year, five tiger skins and 125 kg of bones were recovered from near Jim Corbett National Park. When the skins were sent to Wildlife Institute of India (WII), the patterns were analysed and found them to match that of at least four missing tigers from the core of Corbett Park.
Further, two tiger skins and 35 kilograms of bones were seized in January from the Valmiki Tiger Reserve near the Bihar-Nepal border in January this year.
Subsequent investigations unearthed three tiger poaching incidents. As per reports, on further interrogation of the poachers, sizeable tiger meat was found buried in a pit nearby. This took the total poaching toll to five. The skin was traced to Kathmandu later.
According to Dr K Ramesh, scientist from WII, because of their population growth, tigers are pushed on the periphery or outside of Protected Areas. “In the process, they venture into various villages, forests and corridors in the quest for new habitats, mates etc. , thereby making them vulnerable to poaching. Hence, what we need today is a landscape approach for tiger conservation, rather than limiting it to simply protected area levels,” he said.
