NEW DELHI: Fifty-one tigers have died in different states of India between January and Dec 5, 2011, according to statistics collated by a prominent wildlife NGO. A tigress shot dead outside Kaziranga Park in Assam on Monday is the latest in that list.
Figures provided by Wildlife Protection Society of India show that 14 tigers perished in Uttarakhand, the highest in a single state. Karnataka takes the second place with six deaths while Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh account for five each.
Poaching, road accident, infighting and fight with other animals are some of the reasons for the deaths. Some tigers died of natural causes and diseases too. A few were killed by villagers, police and the forest department.
"Tiger poachers are still active. On Dec 2, forest department officials recovered a tiger trap placed by poachers in the Nagarjunasagar Srisailam tiger reserve of Andhra Pradesh," says Tito Joseph, programme manager, WPSI.
Skins, bones, skulls and claws of the royal big cat have also been seized in Manipur, Orissa, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand this year.
A tigress was found dead without claws, canines and whiskers in Chhattisgarh's Bhoramdeo Wildlife Sanctuary on Nov 15. "A labourer engaged in patrolling had committed the act. He has been arrested and jailed. He confessed that he had poisoned a cow killed by the tigress. The big cat came back for the kill and died of poisoning. He then took out the claws and other parts of its body," Ram Prakash, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Chhattisgarh told TOI over phone.
There were three more tiger deaths in November. On Nov 3, a tigress was accidentally electrocuted by a cable connection connected to an electric motor pump in vihirgaon village in Maharashtra's Chandrapur district. In another case on Nov 20, tiger died after getting trapped in a wire set up by villagers near Tipeswar Wildlife Sanctuary, Yavatmal, Mahrashtra.
"The tiger got entangled and was strangulated after it tried to break free. A local farmer has been arrested," says AK Saxena, Additional PCCF Wildlife, Maharashtra.
On Nov 20, an injured 14-year-old tiger known as B2 was tranquilized and rescued by forest department in Madhya Pradesh's Bandhavgarh reserve. But the tiger died some time after the capture, WPSI sources say.
The tiger census figures released officially in Jan 2008, showed a mere 1,411 tigers alive as compared to 3,508 in 1997, a drastic drop of 60%. According to fresh government estimates in March 2011, the number now is anywhere between 1,571 and 1,875; the average working out to 1,706.
WPSI figures show 58 tiger deaths in 2010: poaching and seizure (30). Other reasons make up for the remaining 28.
Samir Sinha, head of TRAFFIC-India that monitors illegal wildlife trade, said the loss of every tiger should be cause for worry. "We must also be prepared to accept that any population will have a certain level of mortality. More than the numbers, it's the nature and cause of death that's the concern," he says.
Conservationists say while the death of every tiger counts, there's a positive side to the story. There are reports of 20 new cubs from Tadoba-Andhari, Pench (MP) and Bandhavgarh tiger reserves in Central India. Extrapolate these figures to other tiger habitats, and the rise in numbers could be significant. However, only when the cubs survive the first two years do they get into the official census figures.
WPSI officials say that the main problem with tiger protection today is lack of intelligence-led enforcement leading a failure in breaching organised poaching gangs. There's also a need to improve co-operation from local people in tiger conservation and perk up management effectiveness, says Joseph.
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