If
you take the statistics of the last five years, there has been a series
of tragic events in the lives of leopards and tigers. Scores of them
have lost their lives, been injured, been relocated from their forest
homes or ended up in zoos. The recent episode in Kolhapur only goes to
show that a new approach has to be developed to resolve man-cat
conflict.
To
start off with, the forest service cannot play God to nature. Fiddling,
manipulating, re-locating and capturing big cats are becoming a new
fashion with the forest service. This culture needs to be nipped in the
bud, as it has dangerous consequences for India’s natural world.
Whenever
a small problem occurs, leopards and tigers get quickly tranquilised
and in some cases moved across the state and parachuted to new areas. In
other cases, if they have a limp or a cut they get tranquilised and
treated with antibiotic! Man’s interference in the life of the big cat
has reached an extreme. Wild tigers and leopards are not pet dogs.
Fiddling, re-locating and capturing big cats are becoming a new fashion with the forest service
Nature
for most part must be left to its own devices. Even when tigers and
leopards are relocated to vacant forests, as in Sariska’s case, the
process has been severely flawed since the wisdom on which animals are
relocated is abysmal.
All
across India, especially in Maharashtra, there is a non-stop procession
of big cats moving back and forth at the whim of less than knowledgeable
forest officers who most of the time have not even been trained in
wildlife. Sometime this process is influenced by ‘the fly-by-night
NGOs’.
Recently,
in Karnataka a young tiger that had attacked and killed a person was
moved from one place to another, and ended up killing a pregnant woman
in his new home. It was shot dead. The question is why was it moved at
all? How many leopards in Maharsahtra have been relocated without any
scientific basis?
A leopard attacks a forest guard in
Prakash Nagar on the outskirts of Siliguri, West Bengal, while trying to
capture the animal which strayed into the village
Does
the forest department have a system where the behaviour of the animal
is analysed and a wildlife scientist consulted before a big cat is
moved?
How
many of these decisions are based on the ridiculous instructions of
senior government officers?
Who are we going to hold responsible and accountable for flawed decision-making, where not just an animal life is lost but so is a human?
Who are we going to hold responsible and accountable for flawed decision-making, where not just an animal life is lost but so is a human?
The
first thing that must be done is that the chief minister of the state
where such problems occur must order an end to ‘big cat fiddling’. After
40 years of working with the big cat, I suggest the following immediate
measures to resolve these conflicts:
A forest official grapples with a leopard found hiding in Oil India campus, Assam
THE SOLUTION
In
many identified and known areas where conflict is high between the big
cat and humans, we need to allow lateral entry on short-term contracts
of wildlife scientists who join the team of forest officers and play a
critical role in deciding how to deal with the problem animal.
Lateral
entry has been recommended by the Administrative Reforms Commission in
2009 and is being suggested so as to give the status of a government
officer to the scientist in order that he is enabled to take decisions.
All district forest officers must get a carefully drafted set of dos and don’ts regarding how to deal with problems of big cat and human
encounters.
It
should spell out the steps of what you do when confronting these
animals. Mishaps take place because of ad hoc decision- making. In
identified areas critical forest staff who deal with such conflict
situations need to be retrained in big cat biology and tranquilisation.
Forest officials carrying a caged leopard in Dehradun, Uttarakhand
These
training capsules should be provided by non-governmental specialists.
If you do not know how to catch a leopard, do not catch it! Wait for
someone who has the knowledge to arrive. If you catch it, do not take ad
hoc decisions to re-locate it as relocating a problem animal can create
a much worse problem for the people living in and around its new home.
Any
forest officer, government servant or NGO who participates in ad hoc
decisions that cause injury or death to leopards, tigers or humans must
be held accountable. Government officers need to have comments in their
Annual Confidential report (ACR) that will effect promotion and lead to
demotion. For the NGO, farewell!
There
will be positive recognition for procedures that are handled well. The
crisis of dealing with big cat problems will only find solutions through
encouraging talent that exists outside government to partner with
government in taking correct decisions.
The
Indian Forest Service needs a wakeup call from the non-governmental
expert and the time has come for them to encourage partnerships and
strategic lateral entries. No longer can we tolerate slipshod attempts
at dealing with leopards and tigers or excuses that are endlessly given
regarding a lack of training and equipment. This is the 21st century and
not the middle ages! The writer is author of ‘Tiger Fire’ & member
of International Cat Specialist Group of the IUCN
A screenshot of a leopard preying on the goat
Farmhouses lure leopards for fun in Gurgaon
Adventure
seeking farmhouse owners in Gurgaon are using live baits to lure wild
animals for fun even as a growing number of farmhouses in the region
continue to threaten wildlife habitats.
A
two-minute video footage taken at a farmhouse in Aravali Retreat near
Gurgaon and accessed by Mail Today shows a leopard preying on a tethered
goat. But the footage, possibly taken late in the night, doesn’t show
if the leopard itself has come under attack after feasting on its prey.
Though
the hilly areas of Aravali forest comes under Gair Mumkin Pahad
(noncultivable land), farmhouse owners allegedly take advantage of a
legal lacunae to construct private properties in the region. According
to a senior official who did not want to be named, farmhouse owners
apply for Change of Land Use (CLU) on the grounds that their properties
have already been cultivable land.
And
once the construction on a farmhouse begins, they secure the compound
with electric fences. The method has proved fatal for wild animals which
try to stray into the compound. The villagers believe that the number
of dead leopards could be much higher in the Aravali region than what
the officials records show.
According
wildlife officials, a leopard was found dead inside a golf resort last
year and people were jostling to take photos with it. The officials also
unearthed skeletal remains of three more big cats during investigation
in and around the golf course premises six months later. Yet they don’t
have a clear idea on the number of leopards residing in the region.
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