Royalty in earlier years and the Government machinery now have continued to hunt the tiger which seems to stand no chance in a world dominated by humans

Wildlife in India has been in a state of historic crisis since Mughal times. The tigers were then considered as “merciless blood sucking beasts” and the sport of killing them came to be known as trophy hunting. Mughal Emperor Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar enjoyed this big-game. His reign gave rise to the tradition of trophy hunting or shikar in India. It passed on from him to his successors until his dynasty fell in 1857. The hunters would often keep a part of the hunted animals as a souvenir.

Paintings from the Mughal period depict Mongol, Rajput, Turk and Afghan nobilities hunting on elephants or horsebacks. These outings were considered exotic and heroic — the tigers being the ultimate trophies.

The British were no different. They would stage elaborate hunts to showcase their pride, wealth, machismo and honour. After ascending the throne in 1911, King George V and his aides travelled north to Nepal, slaying 39 tigers in just 10 days. Colonel Geoffrey Nightingale shot more than 300 tigers in India. In less than 50 years of our existence, from 1875 to 1925, we managed to kill more than 80,000 tigers in the country.

While most killings were trophy hunts, some considered tigers as vermin, and were systematically erased and ‘exterminated’ with incentives from the Government. In other words, the authorities legitimised their act by vilifying the big cats, casting them as terrible, bloodthirsty beasts with an insatiable hunger for human flesh.

After India’s independence, killing tigers for sport escalated. Hunters from around the world came to this country for a guaranteed trophy advertised by the Indian travel industry. Because the biggest animals made the best trophies, the largest, strongest cats disappeared from the gene pool.

By 1971, when hunting was outlawed by the Indian Government with the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, coming into play, we had already killed thousands of tigers.

Illegal land encroachments due to overpopulation, demand of tiger skin and bones for beauty and medicine, and illegal hunting practices for entertainment reduced the tiger population in the country to 1,800 by 1971. Condition was such that there were assumptions of tigers getting extinct by the end of the year 2000.

In the year 1973, “Project Tiger” was launched. With the aim to save the steadily declining population of tigers in the country, “Project Tiger” still stands out as one of the most comprehensive project to protect the big cats.

Today, we have less than 2,500 tigers left in the wild, which is more than 50 per cent of the total tiger population across the world.

In recent years, special focus has been given to tiger conservation with several organisations, like the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), among others, working towards protecting the endangered species.

Here, a question arises: Have these efforts been stopped by the bureaucrats and the politicians to impose their will? Royalty in earlier years and the Government machinery now have continued to hunt the tiger which seems to stand no chance in a world dominated by humans.

Recently, Avni (T1), a six-year-old tigress in the forests of Yavatmal in Maharashtra was hunted and shot dead due to claims of her being a man-eater. According to locals and forest officials in Maharashtra, she was accused of killing and devouring 13 people in the past year-and-a-half.

Many assert that there was no proof of Avni killing those 13 people in the village, and the shoot-to-kill order was given to free up the land from tigers so as to aid industrialists to start work in the area.

A hunter, Nawab Shafath Ali Khan, was given the task to tranquilise or kill Avni, a mother of two 10-month-old cubs. Post-mortem reports have revealed that no attempts were made to capture the animal and she was directly shot after several months of search.

In order to protect the tigress from a torturous death, there was a loud uproar on social media. On-ground campaign with hashtag #LetAvniLive and several marches in major cities across the country were also held.

An appeal was made to the President and the Prime Minister of our country to save Avni. But the Government as well as the forest officials in Maharashtra failed to capture the tigress alive.

Avni’s death is a big question mark on the conservation efforts taken up by the Government in protecting these endangered species. The highest court in the country upheld the order to shoot the tigress, in spite of several attempts by celebrities, media and animal activists to stop Avni’s death.

It was not just the death of a  tigress, but of democracy, and our efforts of conservation of the last bit of wildlife left in the country.

Next in line was a leopard who was labeled as a man-eater in Bageshwar district of Uttarakhand. Private shooters were called for the killing of the cat. These cases also raise a question as to why private hunters and shooters are appointed when India’s forest departments have nearly 90,000 workers on their roll, who are trained with tranquilising guns to prevent such inhumane killing of an animal.

These are just a few examples of the many, where human greed has been the cause of wildlife destruction. We continue to grow and encroach their land, leaving them to live in only about 10 per cent of the country’s total potential tiger habitat of 300,000 sq km (115,830 sq miles).

Animal density in many of these forest areas is high and surplus tigers sometimes venture outside for food. Poachers have gained from the man-animal conflict by killing the tigers and bribing the villagers to set up traps.

What we need from the Government is the expansion of reserved land for animals and an increased awareness on the issues which pertain to the extinction of tigers across the world.

Stricter forest administration is required to prevent poaching of not just tigers, but all other animals for their skin, tusks, horns and bones.

(The writer is an Executive Director of Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations)