How they killed the poster cubs of Panna

Exposed: Monitoring team did not let the Panna father meet his cubs for 4 months since birth

Open Magazine, 15 September, 2010

With cubs from the only litter born to reintroduced tigers missing for three weeks now, authorities seem to be at a loss to explain the setback to the government’s high-profile drive to repopulate Sariska and Panna. One of the three missing cubs has apparently been traced, but even the authorities have given up hope for the other two following reports of repeated fights between their parents.

While Dr Rajesh Gopal, head of National Tiger Conservation Authority, went on record saying that “such conflicts are common among tigers leading to the death of newborn cubs”, Panna Field director SR Murthy found it “intriguing” that the lone Panna male tiger that fathered the cub got aggressive with the mother and the babies.

Official reports, however, reveal that the deaths are neither intriguing nor common. The conflict was the result of an inexplicable intervention, in violation of the basics of cat biology, by a joint team of state forest department and Wildlife Institute of India that monitors the three reintroduced big cats in Panna.

In his note sent to HS Pabla, Principle Chief Conservator of Forests, Madhya Pradesh, on September 13, field director Murthy admitted that while the father (T3) tried to approach the mother (T1) and the cubs soon after they were born, the monitoring staff “did not allow such meetings”, essential for natural familiarisation.

According to this report, the litter of four cubs was born on April 15/16. Shockingly, it took the monitoring team four months to get “technical and scientific opinions from all quarters and the project team of WII” before allowing the father to meet the tigress and the cubs on August 19.

Murthy reported repeated fights between T1 and T3 once they were allowed to meet. In all likelihood, the tiger could not identify the cubs as his own and tried to kill them so that he could mate with the tigress again. Like any tigress, T1 resolutely defended her cubs, at the risk of injuries to herself, but apparently could not save all of them.

Male tigers are instinctively protective about their cubs and there are several recorded instances of them helping the tigress bring up the babies by sharing kills etc. It is only when a father is ousted by another male that infanticide takes place with the new male trying to kill his predecessor’s cubs – partly to establish his own bloodline and also to free the tigress that refuses to mate while bringing up cubs.

Since T3 is the only male tiger in Panna, it is inexplicable why the authorities denied him access to his cubs. “Normal course of familiarisation would never have allowed such aggressive behaviour. Someone needs to explain how such a decision to keep the father away was taken under the nose of top forest officials and in the presence of experts from WII,” said tiger expert Valmik Thapar, who recorded, as far back as in the 1980s, how male tigers took care of their cubs in Ranthambhore.

The elusive tiger and too many loud, blind men

Pet theories are emotional, and generalizations naïve, but it is dangerous when these threaten the fate of a species little understood

Bengal Post, 1 September, 2010

Do I agree that all tigers in Sunderbans are maneaters? That was the angry question hurled at me over phone last evening by a wildlife enthusiast who runs an NGO in Kolkata. I was stumped. Could I answer such a question? Was not it like asking if (all) Indians are corrupt? Or (all) cricketers greedy?

When I pointed out my problem with the question, I was told, more angrily, that anyone who knew Sunderbans would agree that the tigers there were all maneaters. Did not I know how many hundreds were killed by tigers historically in this mangrove delta? Or that even the watchtowers were secured with tough fencing? Would I dare take a walk along one of those creeks?

I humbly pointed out that if we were to believe in anecdotal records, thousands of people had died of tiger attacks all over India in the past and such figures did not necessarily single out Sunderbans tigers for their maneating propensity. I added that if I found a dog confined behind a bolted door at a friend’s house, I would rather attribute the unusual move to the host’s concern for my safety than to the animal’s obvious ferocity. And I really might not walk the Sunderbans forests partially because I fear encountering a problem tiger disturbed by the practice of frequent capture-release and partially because mangroves do not offer a particularly pleasant walking experience.

At that point, the wildlife enthusiast hung up on me. But what triggered this angry call got me thinking. Dr Monirul Khan, a tiger expert from Bangladesh, was in Kolkata to attend a tiger meet last week and he was quoted in the media, saying he thought one out of every ten tigers in Sunderbans were maneaters. No, he did not furnish any proof. I expressed my reservations to such regressive fear-mongering and a mini-hell broke loose.

Even before I received this angry call, some friends from Kolakata pointed out Dr Khan’s “excellent credentials”, daring me to doubt his maneater theory. To be honest, all I knew about Dr Khan until last week was that he pioneered a model that used dogs to ward off tigers. The effort was documented by none less than a BBC crew. Not much has been heard of it since.


Then, I stumbled upon Dr Khan’s paper on the dog experiment. He said use of domestic dogs to ward off animals was not a new idea and gave three examples. His first example – driving wild boars into forests in some areas in the US – is not relevant since wild boars do not usually eat dogs. Then he mentioned how Jim Corbett’s dog Robin used to track leopards for him, and how trained dogs were used to locate individual tigers in the Russian Far East. So dogs can surely get you to a big cat. But what about getting away?

Dr Khan claimed dogs were trained to alert wood gatherers or honey hunters of tiger presence nearby and that the “success rate in distinguishing the tiger was 62 per cent”. If I were to trust my life on a dog, I would prefer him to be slightly more accurate. Moreover, how was this success rate determined? Well, “either immediately, by observing the animals or their signs, or the next day (to avoid the risk of encountering any tiger) by observing pugmarks or scat.” Next day, did he say? I guess wild animals were expected to be cooperative enough and not trample upon those sites till researchers returned 24 hours later.

But there is more. Dr Khan assumes that tigers prefer humans to dogs and this makes the dogs on duty safe. Again, by his own admission, tigers attack people in Sunderbans only when they enter the forest and not in villages. But there are records of tigers picking up village dogs. The last recorded instance in Sunderbans was in November last year when a dog was killed in Gosaba's Pirkhali village.

So, tigers do hunt dogs. Now if a dog barks inside a forest at the sight of a deer or a boar, there is a high probability of a tiger picking up the noise from half a kilometer away. So far from alerting people, the presence of a dog inside forests may actually attract predators and endanger people accompanying it.

On the maneating debate, let us assume that all Sunderbans tigers consider humans as food. A tiger makes roughly 50 kills a year to survive. Sunderbans’ 300 tigers would make at least 15,000 kills every year. If humans are part of the normal prey base for Sunderbans tigers, and since humans are easier to hunt, one would expect a sizable number of these 15,000 kills to be humans. Even at 10 per cent, we are looking at a human casualty figure of 1,500 per year. However, the total annual human death toll across Sunderbans barely ever touches 100. The figures just do not add up.

In fact, between 1984 and 2006, tigers killed 490 people in Bangladesh -- at an annual average of 21. In the same period, data shows that of all the Sunderbans tigers that killed people, about 50 per cent killed only one person each, implying these were accidental attacks. Still we go on making casual remarks on how the love for human flesh is getting embedded in the Sunderban tiger’s gene. No scientist will even dignify such claims with a response.

So, do I believe all tigers in Sunderbans are maneaters? Frankly, I do not know. These mangrove tigers do kill humans opportunistically. But very little ground research has been conducted in this hostile terrain for anyone to reach a conclusion yet. Fortunately, a few very able scientists are at work on both sides of the border and their findings will hopefully throw some light on the behaviour of these much-misunderstood tigers in the near future. Till then, we better hold on to our pet theories. Let’s not play blind men around a tiger.

Some Easy Steps To Kill Tigers

How does a tiger become a good candidate for a new breeding programme? Forget science and genetics. The first tiger spotted is the first tiger shipped out

TEHELKA, 22-28 August, 2010

Journalists who cover ‘sensitive’ sectors such as the Ministry of Defence or External Affairs are used to restricted access. These ministries often cite national interest to make it difficult to question some of the “stories” they dish out. One would not imagine the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to be so secretive. But the green ministry plays the same power game in protected forests off limits for the masses and the media.

No one would grudge the ministry its clout to quietly and quickly secure ecological interests in a squabbling, dithering democracy. But these secret machinations can be a dangerous game. Last month, one such move went horribly wrong, rubbishing credible science, betraying public trust and wasting crores of rupees in public money.

In a joint exercise, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the Rajasthan Forest Department and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) shifted a fourth tiger to Sariska on 20 July. There has been a 17-month moratorium since the last tiger was shifted in February 2009. The media was told that the delay was due to a thorough scientific exercise that was necessary to ascertain genetic compatibility after the first three tigers shifted to Sariska turned out to be siblings and also failed to breed. When the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) finally cleared two tigers for relocation after matching the DNA of the Ranthambore tigers with the ones shifted to Sariska, the officials claimed, the operation was resumed.

A triumph for science and conservation, the media was told. Well, almost. If only the officials shifted the right tigers, the ones cleared by the NCBS.

DNA analysis is done either from blood or scat (droppings) samples. WII scientists have been involved in a radiocollaring exercise in Ranthambore for more than three years. Though it is mandatory to collect blood when a tiger is tranquilised for radio-collaring, and they have collared many, no blood sample was sent to NCBS. So the DNA tests were done with scats and two samples were found suitable.

The next logical step was to find the two tigers whose scats were cleared. Since nobody saw any tiger defecating while collecting the samples, this was the tricky part. One collection point near Kamaldhar was frequented by five tigers — three males (T12, T28 and T38) and two females (T17 and T19). The other collection point was at the edge of the park, visited by a young male (T24) and also by T12.

The two females (T17 and T19) are known to be closely related to the females already in Sariska. So the officials knew that these DNA results would not come handy for identifying a suitable female and any selection would be random without further studies. For a male, they had four possibilities (T24, T12, T28 and T38) to check.

But within 48 hours of receiving the NCBS report, without even trying to ascertain which individual was actually cleared by the DNA test, the officials picked up the T12 male. Why? Because T12 had hunted a cow on 18 July and was the easiest target when the darting team arrived on 19 July.

It did not matter that T12 was six years old, had an established territory and was one of the four dominant males of Ranthambore. It did not matter that a 2008 NTCA directive prohibited shifting settled, territorial tigers and allowed relocation of young floaters still on the lookout for territories. It did not matter that a similar mature, settled tiger shifted from Pench to Panna started walking back home, risking its life and triggering panic among people. It did not matter that all the other three candidates were younger than T12 and two of them were floaters ideal for shifting.

On 28 July, days after shifting T12, officials sent a tigress to Sariska (T44) who was recently photographed while mating by many Ranthambore regulars. If she is indeed pregnant, her cubs will be doomed in Sariska in the absence of their father. So will be the cubs of the tigress that paired with T12 days before he was removed from Ranthambore.

ASOURCE IN WII revealed that the tiger reintroduction project was initially conceived as part of the ongoing WII research at Ranthambore. As the researchers kept collaring tigers, they were supposed to keep checking their blood samples for genetic compatibility and shift suitable candidates that met other criteria like age to Sariska as and when possible. Then, a sudden populist rush, he rued, hijacked the project.

But it is shocking that our officials would brazenly repeat the same mistakes that they were forced to own up to only recently. What was the point of the 17-month moratorium, sundry committees, repeated field surveys and DNA analyses if they were to again pick up whichever tiger they found easy to dart?

It may appear a fait accompli but the WII must make public how they identified the right tigers from the scat samples cleared by NCBS. The NTCA must spell out who is responsible for shifting resident and breeding tigers from the core population, violating its own guideline. The MoEF must send blood samples of the new Sariska tigers, collected in the presence of independent observers, to NCBS to confirm if the right individuals were selected.

Unfortunately, the only heads that ever roll in our forests belong to tigers.

The writer is an independent journalist and a filmmaker