Even the word panic is not sufficient to describe the mental state of the people living in a 12-sq km area near the jungles of the Wayanad-Gudalur border between Kerala and Tamil Nadu where a tiger killed a 62-year-old farmer and devoured the body, mauled to death a 34-year-old woman tea estate worker and seriously injured a youth, all between February 9 and 14.
It was no surprise that the protests of the people in the villages on the Tamil Nadu side of the border, where tea estate worker Mahalakshmi was mauled to death by the big cat on Saturday, demanding protection from wild animals on Saturday and Sunday slipped into violence necessitating immediate compromises from the part of the authorities.
Several hours after the Kerala Forest and Wildlife Department ordered to kill the man-eating tiger, the Nilgiri district authorities of Tamil Nadu agreed to the protestors’ demand for a shoot-to-kill order on the big cat. Massive hunts for the tiger on both sides of the inter-state border have started but it is yet to be seen when the shooters will be able to spot the cat and kill it.
However, wildlife experts ascribe the phenomenon of the cat killing humans to feed, unprecedented in the region, to the shrinkage of jungles, destruction of the forest ecosystem, growth in the big cat population and expansion of human habitats near the jungles. In short, they say that these developments have tipped the balance between jungles and human habitats.
“Increase in incidents of human-animal conflicts is inevitable in such a situation. When this happens, it is not just marauding wild elephants and man-eating tigers which intrude the villages. Even diseases confined to forests invade human habitats,” says Velayudhan, an Adivasi watcher in Wayanad. “Two Adivasis died of monkey fever in Wayanad in three days,” he adds.
According to Velayudhan, the biggest threat the farmers and other people living in the villages bordering the 344-sq km Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary had been facing till two years back was attacks of wild elephants. As many as 41 persons had been killed in attack by wild elephants in ten years on the forest fringes between Thirunelli and Noolpuzha in Wayanad district.
The violent intrusion by a tiger in recent times into the human habitat around the Wayanad sanctuary happened near Sulthan Bathery in November-December, 2012. It killed about 24 cattle within as many days but it was not able to eat any of the livestock because of villager’s alertness. The big cat was shot dead on December 2, 2012.
Experts say that one of the reasons for recurring tiger intrusions into human habitats is the growth in the endangered animal’s population within the Wayanad sanctuary. As per official data, the Wayanad sanctuary is now home to 76 of the total 136 tigers in Kerala. The rest of the cats are in the two Tiger Reserves of the State: Periyar and Parambikulam.
“Over-exploitation of forest resources by humans, unscientific re-forestation by the Forest Department and rise in atmospheric temperatures and the resultant depletion of the undergrowth push animals like deer out of the jungles and tigers, left with almost nothing to feed on, can be forced to search for food outside,” says Sivadasan, a conservationist.