Sunday Pioneer, 30 Oct, 2011
First, a disclaimer: I am not given to anthropomorphic tendencies. Animals, wild or not, are animals. But still, it is difficult to think of her as it.
Her disregard for crowd and camera can shame any film icon. Over 14 years, she has been spotted by more than 100 million tourists. A few days every year, tens of thousands of pilgrims walk all over her territory on their way to Ranthambhore’s famed Ganesh temple. She hardly cares.
Her composure and confidence can humble the most efficient single mother. Despite being almost always surrounded by crowds, she has deftly raised nine cubs in four (some wrongly claim five) litters to adulthood between 2000 and 2008. She never compromised her little ones’ safety but rarely charged people even when they ventured too close for comfort. She has some nerve.
Her courage and determination make her a remarkable survivor, particularly by her species’ dodgy standards. She repeatedly took on deadly marsh crocodiles bigger than her and overcame them. Even after those mortal combats cost her two canines, she not only continued to hunt and support herself but also fed five cubs in two litters. Physical handicaps starve even dominant tigers to death over weeks. She won most of her battles in the mind.
Her far-reaching contribution can dwarf many game-changers we idolise. With crores of tourists cherishing how they photographed her, she has been the biggest advertisement for tiger conservation. In 2009, when she was awarded for lifetime achievement at the British Ambassador’s residence in New Delhi (no, she was not there), it was rather conservatively estimated that she had already generated $10 million for the local economy through tourism. But that’s not all.
Almost singlehandedly, she has defended India’s fragile westernmost population of tigers through an ominous decade. Including those nine cubs from three males, her bloodline has so far produced at least 38 tigers in Ranthambhore, including two females sent to repopulate Sariska. Of the 38, 31 are alive today and constitute 60 per cent of Rajasthan’s present tiger population.
She is the tiger legend: T16 alias the Lady of the Lake alias Machli.
When I first saw the young tigress at the turn of the century, I did not even know she had a name. Afterwards, I watched, photographed and filmed the reigning queen of the three majestic lakes near the craggy fort at the heart of Ranthambhore many a time. As tigers disappeared from Rajasthan with poachers striking at will in the first half of the last decade and hollow promises crumbled all around, the very sight of Machli — strolling, stalking, ambushing, raising still more cubs or just minding her own business — was one of the few reassuring constants. We sought to spot her every time we passed by her territory, as an omen of sorts.
It was a miracle that Machli raised her fourth litter at a ripe age and without two canines. However spectacular, all things, even George Harrison knew, must pass away. So three years on, now Machli has lost all but half a canine, a little patch of her once vast territory, and some of her indomitable spirit. She still makes occasional kills. But without the baits the forest department has been offering her for two years now, she would have long been dead.
Except in photos clicked every season by tourists on Machli pilgrimage, I have not seen her after 2009. I refuse to watch an amazing wild tiger reduced to a pathetic spectacle.
For generations fed on the 1966 blockbuster based on Joy Adamson’s Born Free, the idea of ‘helping’ wild animals, particularly big cats, is one of the loftiest goals of conservation.
Machli is not the only victim of our compassion. Life support was also offered to her contemporary and partner T2, the ancient Anantpura male. The big daddy fathered many tigers, including three sent to repopulate Sariska. By 2010, he was too weak to kill even chained buffaloes and finally died this year. In April 2009, a young Ranthambhore male (T29) was operated upon for an injury and set on his feet. It is another matter that Ranthambhore’s tiger population is showing a skewed sex ratio, with too many males around and nature must eliminate a few to restore balance.
Yet, across the country, old and injured tigers are being baited and treated, and orphaned cubs are being brought up in “natural enclosures”.
Not to mention the smug celebrations every time a maneater is packed off to a zoo, instead of being put down.
But animal welfare is an ethical and not an ecological concern. At best, these efforts have no bearing on wildlife conservation. At worst, they defeat its very purpose. In nature, the weak and the injured must perish so that the fittest may flourish. So an aged tiger dies of starvation or at the hands of a young adversary.
The reign of Charger, revered as the mightiest ever of all Bandhavgarh tigers, ended in a deadly fight with one of his grandsons in 2002. Of course, the forest staff tried to feed the mauled, half-blind veteran but he did not respond. Had Charger survived thanks to human benevolence, his young grandson would have had to get into another fight to kill him, thereby inviting fresh injuries or jeopardising his own future as a dominant male.
Yet, we treat the wild like pets.
In September 2008, Ranthambhore’s Guda tigress died of suspected poisoning, leaving two sub-adult cubs, about 16 months old. The forest department promptly stepped in and handed out routine baits to the T36 male and his sibling T37 female.Raised on calves, the brother-sister duo possibly lost, or did not get to acquire, much of wild survival skills. The sister has a better chance since females seldom face deadly challenges from other females. The brother’s luck gave out when he ran into a probing male in October last year. The adversary was just three years old. The natural advantage should have been with T36. But it was an unequal battle between a raised tiger and a wild one.
Once he was orphaned, 16-month-old T36 would have died of starvation. Or, maybe, necessity would have made a wild tiger out of him. But by offering him baits, forest officials consigned him to an inevitable end. Poor T36 was dead the day he became a raised tiger in the wild.
Another brother-sister duo, orphaned when Ranthambhore’s Berdha tigress died in April 2009, enjoyed regular baits from the park officials. In July 2010, Simba, the three-year-old brother, seriously injured himself attempting a wild hunt. He was spotted in a sorry shape during the monsoon, suffering from deep wounds inflicted by porcupine quills. Then, he disappeared.
This blinkered welfare motive is not limited to cubs and the elderly though. For example, sending a “man-eater” to a zoo does save its life but, in terms of wildlife conservation, the effort is no better than shooting the animal dead. In both cases, the result is one animal less in the wild.
Our excitement about saving “man-eaters” shifts the focus from the real problems — absence of buffer forests, faulty land use around forests — that push predators to chance encounters with people and create “man-eaters”. If these root causes are not addressed and if we do not learn to differentiate between accidental and deliberate attacks, we may soon be left with empty forests, once we have happily rescued all the tigers as “maneaters” to zoos.
The more obvious fallout of Born Free is our aspiration to return orphaned cubs to the wild. But cubs raised in captivity have rarely succeeded in the wild. They lack in hunting skills and fail to defend themselves. Also, bereft of any fear of humans, they tend to get into conflict.
Captive females do stand a chance since wild males accept them as mating partners. For a hand-raised lioness, such acceptance even compensates for her lack of hunting skills as she gets to feed with the pride. After rehabilitating Elsa the lioness, Adamson successfully returned two more hand-raised cats to the wild. Not a coincidence that Pippa the cheetah and Penny the leopard were also females.
In India, Billy Arjan Singh experimented with four hand-raised cats. Tigress Tara and leopardesses Harriet and Juliette had cubs in the wild, but the whereabouts of Prince, the male leopard, remained uncertain. The attempts had led to conflict and subsequent poisoning of Harriet and Juliette.
In Karnataka, Gajendra Singh released two leopards near Bandipur in 1999. While the male was killed soon after while attempting to hunt a sambar stag, the female survived. Emboldened, Singh repeated the experiment this year with three orphan leopard cubs. Around the same time, Bangalore-based NGO Vanamitra was allowed to release three hand-raised cubs in Bhadra. Within months, the cats killed two villagers and injured many, forcing the State forest department to remove them from the wild and ban such experiments.
An excellent guideline issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests in 2010 is unambiguous on the issue: “A cub without its mother usually does not need ‘rescue’ as the mother leaves the cubs when she goes hunting. Equally, cubs released without its mother have poor survival probabilities. If cubs are found alone, a watch must be kept for their mother without disturbing them. Cubs are not to be ‘released’, but only require ‘reuniting’ with their mother. Reuniting should be attempted immediately in the night in the same area, from where they were picked up.”
“Cubs that are hand-reared in captivity have a negligible possibility of future release back to the wild. Lifetime care is the only suitable option for such cubs, since their release in the wild even after a long-term rehabilitation process may only worsen the already existing conflict situation.”
Yet, three orphaned Tadoba cubs are being raised in an enclosure in Maharashtra’s Bor sanctuary since September 2009. The forest department and a Nagpur-based NGO, Shrusti, are adamant that they are fit to be released in Pench tiger reserve. While Wildlife Institute of India has deferred a final decision, it will be the worst advertisement for tiger conservation if these cubs are set free and they run into conflict with the villagers.
Our romanticism blinds us to the lessons we should have learnt by now. Even before the sordid Karnataka experience, a hand-raised leopard, Lakshmi, was released on the outskirts of Ranthambhore in 2009. Soon, the people-friendly cat ran after local villagers, spreading panic. Lakshmi is now confined to an enclosure deep inside the reserve, much to the annoyance of the wild resident cats of the area.
A similar welfare drama is playing out in Bandhavgarh. When the Jhurjhura tigress was run over by a vehicle in May last year, the future of her three small cubs in the wild was sealed. One of the cubs was killed by a male. Still, the other two cubs are being raised in an enclosure at the heart of the reserve. In all these cases, instead of taking the cubs to zoos — to quote wildlife photographer Aditya Singh — we are deluding ourselves by bringing zoos to the forests.
Welfare is often a selfish motive.
We want to return the Bor cubs back to the wild or keep Machli alive because it gives us an emotional and moral high. It is not them but merely our perception of them that we want to protect and preserve.
Not many Ranthambhore regulars talk about the Sultanpuri tigress (T14) any more. For many years, Machli’s sister was the prize sighting in Zone 1. Then, she was challenged by T13, one of her three daughters, in 2009. Soon, the mother surrendered her territory. T13 became the new Sultanpuri female and has already raised three cubs of her own.
Machli was lucky to hang on to about one-fifth of her territory after she was dethroned by her dominant daughter, T17. When the forest department begun baiting her under public glare, sister Sultanpuri was stumbling away to Bhaironpura where she took refuge at the edge of the national park. Though she was exactly Machli’s age (from the same litter), nobody lobbied to keep her alive. Away from the tourism zone, Sultanpuri made occasional kills and scavenged some more. Her last known big kill was a buffalo this February. It is already six months since she was last spotted sometime in April.
Sultanpuri’s lonely, helpless end may sadden us. But unlike her sister, she was fortunate to have been left alone. The biggest disservice millions of Machli fans could do to her was to treat the fierce fighter as destitute. If we agree that the wild are born free, we must learn to respect that freedom, in life and death.
The writer is an independent journalist
1 comment:
Conservation has become a fad these days. Sad to see sentiments overruling science and sound logic!!!
Keep up the good work sir!!! I really enjoy reading your articles!!
Regards,
Aditya
Post a Comment