It is likely tigers and leopards are moving closer to human habitation
because of canine distemper virus affliction.— File PHOTO: M.A. SRIRAM
Man-animal conflict creates suspicions of big cats getting afflicted by CDV
In view of escalating man-animal conflict involving
tigers around Bandipur-Nagarahole belt, the authorities are wondering if
the Canine Distemper Virus (CDV), which spreads from dogs and can be
deadly for big cats, has been affecting wildlife.
The
virus is contagious and has no cure once it affects tigers or leopards,
though the dogs have chances of survival. The afflicted wild animal
gets disoriented, loses fear of human beings and tends to lurk closer to
human habitation. This leads to the cats not only being sighted more
often on the forest fringes, but it also makes them susceptible to
poaching.
The suspicions of CDV stems from an
increase in the number of tigers and leopards being spotted in human
landscape along the forest fringes. While two people were killed in
Hediyala in tiger attacks in the last one month, two others were injured
in separate attacks and four people had lost their lives to tiger
attacks around Bandipur in 2013.
Though it is only a
remote possibility, nothing can be ruled out until a scientific study is
conducted. The serum and viscera of the ‘man-eater’ of Bandipur shot
dead at Hediyala on Thursday has been collected and would be sent to the
laboratory for analysis, said a senior Forest Department official.
CDV
in big cats was first observed in Russia, and Sumatra in Indonesia,
while the Serengeti National Park lost one-third of its lion population
to the deadly disease in the 1990s.
The source told
The Hindu
that if the test proved positive then the feral dog population would
have to be inoculated but the exercise would be humungous in scope.
For
the record, there are more than 250 villages on the fringes of Bandipur
and about 150 villages along Nagarahole border, and the rate of
interaction of domestic animals with wild animals is high. The standard
procedure in a zoo is to inoculate the captive animals twice or thrice a
year.
The subject has also been a topic of
discussion among tiger experts in the past, but the scientific community
is divided over the subject as one group dismissed it as a remote
possibility and a waste of resources which could be better channelised
to handle proven threats.
However, the National Tiger
Conservation Authority protocol mandates that the blood of the dead
animal be examined to rule out CDV or other diseases.
Recent
studies have shown that smaller, fragmented tiger populations face
higher risk of local extinction due to CDV. There are several sites in
India, and even within Karnataka that hold small isolated populations
that are embedded in a matrix of dense population of humans,
livestock,domestic and feral dogs. Though there are no recorded
incidences of CDV in large wild cats it would be good to assess the risk
of CDV. Perhaps,we also need to do this on leopards and the leopards
that are frequently captured by the forest department provide an ideal
opportunity.
Sanjay Gubbi
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