Why trying to save a man-eater could end up harming the tiger species

Why trying to save a man-eater could end up harming the tiger species

Article

1. This article explains why trying to save a man-eater could end up harming the tiger species and should be avoided.

Important Facts

2.  India is the home to the largest tiger population in the world.

3. Project Tiger

• Aims at conserving India’s national animal i.e. Tiger.
• Launched in 1973
• Currently there are 50 tiger reserves
• The tiger reserves are constituted on a core/buffer strategy.
• The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) is a statutory body under the Ministry of Environment and Forest.

4. Wild tigers are found in 18 States in India

5. The All India tiger estimation is carried out once in every four years.

6. Records show that not more than 100 people are killed or injured by the tigers in a year in India.

Background

7. A tigress in Maharashtra has been blamed for a series of human killings since 2016. Similarly   a tigress in Odisha killed a woman recently.

8. Demands have been raised to either kill the animal or to relocate it.

9. A shoot on sight order has been issued to kill the man-eater tigress of Maharashtra.

10.Supreme Court has refused to intervene in the matter.

11. Activist and NGOs have been opposing attempts to eliminate the animal.

How to manage a man –animal conflict?

12. Public outcry should not be the basis of declaring any Tiger a man-eater.

13. Examining the circumstance of an attack is crucial to determine whether an attack was accidental or deliberate.

• Many of the attacks by tigers are incidental, for example a tigress trying to protect its cubs or tigers mistaking people on their haunches as a prey animal.

14. Next step is to identify the animal involved in multiple deliberate attacks. This can be done through DNA analysis of saliva, camera trapping etc.

15. The last step is to declare an identified serial offender a man-eater.

16.  Once declared a man eater, the animal should be removed as soon as possible.

17. 2013 standard operating procedure of NTCA says that a man eater must be caught and sent to the nearest zoo and not be released in the wild.

18.  Conservation is about saving the species and not defending individual at the cost of the species.

19. Letting a man-eater continue in the wild will result in more attacks, thus further infuriating the locals and can make every tiger in the vicinity a potential target of reprisal.