Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

I was recently watching a video, shot by my brother-in law, when he was visiting the Kanha National Park in India. It was of a magnificent tiger who just walked past their open jeep in all its glory.

This suddenly brought back the memories of my school days, when I had snagged a book from my fathers collection called Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett. The book was about Corbett’s experiences with man eating tigers in the Kumaon region of India and how he saved the lives of many people by killing the tigers. Jim Corbett is still famous for being a naturalist and conservationist and a National park has been named in his honor.

The book fueled in me the desire to see a tiger at close range. Though I had seen quite a few at the circus and zoo, watching one at close range was a different experience all together. There is nothing comparable to seeing a wild animal in its natural habitat.

Many of us are oblivious of the fact as to how closely our existence depends on that of wild animals. Even though we consider ourselves to be at the top of the food chain and grossly misuse our power, the fact remains that, our species can be wiped out due to gross negligence and misguided beliefs of humans being the “be all and end all” of this world. As an “Apex Predator” the tiger is at the top of the natural food chain and holds the key in preserving the water, air, and forests. By eating sixty to eighty animals a year, a Tiger keeps check on the population of herbivores, who otherwise would denude the forest with excessive grazing and turn it into barren lands.

The fate of the tiger and in turn our own fate is in our hands. But sadly in 1970s we came dangerously close to losing this magnificent species “Panthera Tigris.” Deforestation, poaching and human expansion brought all the species of tigers to the brink of extinction. There were eight sub-species out of which the Javan, Caspian, and Balinese are already extinct. Studies of tiger population estimate, that 100 years ago approx 100,000 tigers roamed all across India, South East Asia, Central Asia, and Eastern China. Now only 5,000–7000 remain in the wild in small pockets of Habitat across the globe.

In 1973, India launched “Project Tiger” which is a wildlife conservation program which aims at tiger conservation in specially constituted tiger reserves representative of various bio-geographical regions throughout India. It strives to maintain a viable tiger population in their natural environment. The first tiger census in 1972 put the tiger population at 1827. The recent report Status of Tigers, Co-Predators, Prey in India by National Tiger Conservation Society and Wildlife Institute of India puts the tiger figures at 1,411.