The mismanagement at the Ranthambhore National Park (RNP) came to the fore as the tiger reserve authorities failed to identify the big cat whose carcass was found on Sunday in the Khandar region of the park.
The authorities also forced wildlife enthusiasts and experts to smell a rat by their hurry to dismiss the tragedy by claiming that the “death was the result of a fight with another big cat” even before the post-mortem and viscera examinations were conducted.
“Badly mutilated carcass suggested that the tiger died some time back, at least 24 hours ago, and the reason for the death could not be ascertained as maggots had eaten up its major body-parts, said district forest officer Y K Sahu. Also the animal’s sex couldn’t be known in the absence of the rear portion of the body.
The death could be the result of a fight with some other big cat as certain canine marks were found on the neck resulting in penetrating wounds, said Dr Rajiv Garg who performed the post mortem. Even the viscera could not be collected due to the decay of the carcass that must be of at least 72 hours old, he added.
However, the forest department tried people to believe that the animal could be the tiger T-27 as certain indications were of its being old.
Interestingly, T-27 had been missing for more than 2 years and the forest department failed to explain its absence, like the park’s three other missing big cats. There seems to be an attempt to hush up the chapter of T-27 by creating a mystery around the carcass, wildlife enthusiasts alleged.
Experts contested the forest officials’ contentions on more than one counts. Rajpal Singh Shekhawat, a tiger expert with the national tiger conservation authority (NTCA), maintained that in the December-end winter the body could not be mutilated and maggot eaten to such an extent within less than 5 to 7 days.Singh, who is also a member of the state board for wildlife, wanted that reasons, other than territorial fights, must be looked into. He wondered how without a post mortem or a viscera test one could speculate about a fight. He demanded that viscera test must have been attempted before any opinion on the cause of death was ascertained.
Sources in the park also pointed out that the area-behind Khandar fort – where the carcass was found was not part of any tiger’s territory. Therefore a territorial fight was ruled out.
Moreover, a perusal of the picture of the carcass revealed that the animal’s neck and other bodies were eaten by the maggots. As such how the authority could claim of a canine mark, they wondered.
Dhirendra Godha, an expert of the RNP tigers, pointed out that on comparison with the pictures of all the adult tigers of the park he found that the carcass didn’t belong to any of the big cats who were assigned particular numbers following the exercise of “identification and estimation”. The exercise was initiated in 2007, completed in 2008 and report made public in 2009.
Significantly, records of none of the 25 cubs that were born during the past 2 years or so have been kept by giving them a specific number as was done in the case of the adults. Godha pointed out that the numbering of tigers at the time of estimation was not simply giving a particular number to a tiger but it also revealed complete identity of the tiger including its unique features such as stripes from both the flanks – left and right.
Sunayan Sharma, working president of the Sariska Tiger Foundation, an NGO, shared Godha’s view and asserted that the system of giving numbers to tigers also helps in keeping track of the animal’s movement. After incidents of unnatural death it also helps considerably in ascertaining its causes, he argued.
Rajasthan’s former principal chief conservator of forests R N Mehrotra who was responsible for the identification and numbering of the tigers asserted that the incident showed that daily monitoring of the tigers was not done.
In the absence of daily monitoring problem of identifying carcasses would increase. In such problem situation carcasses could be identified by locating other tigers and following the process of elimination. In his opinion the carcass could be one of the sub-adult cubs of the tigress T-26 who were born around May 2011.
More so, because her territory was the closest to the site where carcass was recovered.
The poisoning of the big cat by villagers should not be ruled out and must be ascertained through scientific examination. Moreover, the forest department must locate T-26 as she could also be the victim, he maintained.
Ranthambhore that could ideally accommodate around 30 tigers currently has 52 tigers leading to territorial fights and man-animal conflicts. Authorities should expand the prey area by developing the neighbouring Keladevi sanctuary and Sawai Man Singh sanctuaries. They have failed to do so, experts alleged.
