Last week, villagers living next
to Uttar Pradesh’s Pilibhit Tiger
Reserve cornered an adult, male tiger, two-and-a-half kilometres inside the
reserve’s core area and bludgeoned it to death before slitting its throat. This
was in retaliation for an earlier tiger attack on some villagers, who had
entered the forest to collect firewood, that left some injured.
For the Dudhwa and Pilibhit tiger reserves — the last remaining protected
habitats for tigers and leopards in UP — this cycle of contesting for space
and retaliation has been the script for long. Pilibhit, in particular, is known
for the higher rate of human fatalities due to animal attacks. According to the
state’s Forest Department, at least six people have died in man-tiger
encounters so far this year, and 21 were killed in Pilibhit in 2017, while one
tiger was declared a man-eater and subsequently captured.
This has led to a mistaken belief
that bloodthirsty tigers in Pilibhit are actively seeking out humans and
venturing far out of the forest. However, the numbers tell a different tale.
***
According to a report published
last week by the UP Forest Department
and Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), Living with the
Wild: Mitigating Conflict between Humans and Big Cat Species in Uttar
Pradesh, as many as 136 cases were reported of big cats killing or injuring
people between 2000 and 2013 — 73 cases involved tigers and 63 were attributed
to leopard attacks. On an average, 12 cases were reported every year between
2002 and 2013. However, the incidence fell to four cases each year between 2013
and 2015.
The report includes information
collected in the last nine years by the Forest Department and WTI as a part of
the Big Cat Conflict Mitigation Project. It analyses the patterns of attacks,
and outlines the circumstances in which these shy animals injure or kill
humans.
A key finding was that over half
of the tiger attacks (54.79%) took place inside the forest or in the fringe
areas, followed by attacks in farmlands (31.5%), particularly sugarcane fields,
which occupy about a third of the district’s sown area. A closer look reveals
that 81.6% of the victims are males, and about 38.6% had ventured into the
forest to collect
firewood, while 32.9% were working in their fields. Nearly 23.3% of
the victims were attacked while defecating near the forest.
The fact that most attacks (90.6%) took place during the day, between 9am
and 4pm — hours when the forest-dependent communities are most active — suggest
that tigers aren’t actively seeking out human beings as prey. “Most
human-tiger encounters are caused by humans accidentally disturbing tigers that
are resting in fields or fringe forests areas during the day,” the report
notes.
Human beings are not a part of the tigers’ food chain. Therefore,
the attacks take place because the
forest and fields are not separated by a buffer zone.
Herbivores, which are the natural prey of big cats, enter these crop fields in
search of food. This is when tigers enter the farmland. The situation is further complicated by sugar
cane fields — the crop provides ample cover for big cats, often allowing them
to inhabit the space undisturbed for months.
While the study notes that the
victims of tiger attacks are mostly adult males who “venture[d] into forests to
a greater degree”, leopards are “more
prone to attacking children below 10 years of age” (78.6%). Most of these
attacks are concentrated in the adjacent villages (92.1%) — nearly half of them
take place inside or near homes (47.6%), and the rest in the peripheral areas
(15.87%) and fields (28.6%).
The largest proportion of leopard attacks took place when the victims,
mostly children, were sleeping, standing idle, doing odd jobs or defecating
(77.8%); only 22.2% of the attacks took place while they were engaged in the
field.
As tigers cohabit with leopards, the
latter has to compete with its larger and more powerful cousin for the limited
prey that is available. Being opportunistic predators, leopards often prey on
livestock and dogs, but most of these incidents remain undetected. However,
these attacks, the report states, are largely accidental.
The lead author of the report, Dr
Mayukh Chatterjee, explained that the spotted
cats are known to avoid large prey, which could injure it. “The fact that most
of the victims here are children is the key. For instance, in 2016, there
was a case when a leopard went in to kill a calf, but it ran away after an
alarm was raised. However, there was a child standing right there, next to a
tubewell; it attacked the child instead.”
The report also suggests the
changes in human behaviour that could help reduce the number of attacks — such as not entering forests alone, not leaving
children unattended, and building toilets at home. A more long-term measure is
the introduction of mechanical harvesters for sugar cane, “a solution that
can greatly reduce attacks on humans during harvesting” of the crop.
However, Chatterjee admits that
the “First thing that will happen with the introduction of harvesters is people
will lose their jobs. But in such a scenario, there is a need to find a middle
ground.”
***
The search for a middle ground
has proved elusive over the years. Successful conservation efforts have not
only led to a spike in the population of big cats, but also in the number of
conflict cases.
Data suggest a spike in conflict
between 2008 and 2009. According to available records, a similar spurt is currently
underway, with 44 cases of conflict recorded since 2013, most incidents taking
place in the preceding two years. “Neither spikes nor lows in the rate of
conflict cases per year are abnormal since they are dependent on a number of
factors including rainfall and availability of prey to big cat population. The
point is that the state has to be prepared for both eventualities,” Chatterjee
argued.
“The most important aspect is to involve the community…, so they are
better equipped to live alongside these large carnivores. That is the most
important long-term initiative,” he added.
Credit: Indian Express Explained
(http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/what-conservation-action-report-on-up-forests-says-of-man-animal-conflict-5150439/)
 |
| Credit: New Indian Express |
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