India's "man-eating" tigers entangled in a blame game

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India’s "man-eating" tigers entangled in a blame game
India is home to the world’s largest wild tiger population, but human-tiger conflicts are on the rise

By NIRANJANA RAJALAKSHMI
PUBLISHED MAY 18, 2022 8:15AM




On a late August afternoon in 2019, a farmer named Shivamadaiah walked with his cattle near Bandipur National Park. The roughly 330-square-mile forested reserve, known for its resident wildlife, lies serenely in the foothills of the Western Ghats in India's southwest state of Karnataka.

That night, Shivamadaiah didn't return home. When a few people went to find him the next day, they initially came upon his ripped slipper. The group walked further, recalls his son, Madhusudhan, who like his father and many Indians, goes by one name. After half a mile, they found Shivamadaiah's half-eaten body lying under a large banyan tree. A tiger had initially aimed for the cows, says Madhusudhan. But then it pounced on their owner instead.

The tiger had taken to roaming outside the forest in order to avoid competing with other tigers for food, says Madhusudhan. "It started getting close to human habitats," he says; it preyed upon cattle. After attacking Shivamadaiah, the big cat went on to kill another local resident.

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As the carnivores have rebounded and reclaimed some of their historic range, humans have pursued development in areas not far from tiger habitat. Likely as a result, from 2010 through 2019, tigers killed 383 humans and valuable livestock. People are starting to lose their tolerance for the big cats, some wildlife biologists say. In 2019, villagers in the state of Uttar Pradesh beat a tigress to death after she attacked a local resident.

But the majority of tigers do not attack humans, and according to some experts, it is important to identify and remove those that do present a threat, in order to minimize human suffering and maintain popular support for tiger conservation. To this end, the Indian government developed guidelines for classifying "man-eating" tigers (the official term has since changed). But classification of individual tigers is often fraught, as are decisions about whether to kill or tranquilize and relocate these large carnivores. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/05/18/indias-man-eating-tigers-entangled-in-a-game_partner/