In the belly of the beast - Part 2: When a tiger attacks

Home to over 250 tigers, Corbett has the highest density of big cats in the country. (Representational image: Joshua Lee via Unsplash)

“This is where the tiger killed the man, just half a mile away,” says an official of the Corbett Tiger Reserve standing close to the Dhangari gateway to the forest.

The incident happened a few months ago. It was a sudden killing of a man by a tiger, the first in 2022. 

The news rattled villages close to the country’s largest tiger reserve. But good sense prevailed and the villagers did not launch any agitation against forest guards, nor were there any demands to declare the tiger a maneater.

The person, whom doctors described as physically challenged, was severely mauled by the wild cat and died from excessive bleeding. The Corbett officials - justifiably - refused to call it a case of a maneater and closed the case after observing the animal for a few months.

“The tiger went back to the interiors of the forest,” says the official, who cannot be named because of state government regulations.

Those living in the vicinity of Dhangari say animal-human conflict is routine in the area but the situation is different when it comes to a tiger. Tiger attacks have always haunted officials of the tiger reserve, and those who live in the vicinity of the forest.

Only on some rare occasions, a tiger or tigress turns into a maneater. In the rest of the cases, it is nothing but a panic attack from the animal, claim the forest rangers of Corbett. 

Also read: Corbett Tiger Reserve: In the belly of the beasts - Part 1

But people remember some incidents that rattled the reserve. Many still talk of the May 26, 2005, incident at Dhikala zone when a tigress attacked and injured a storekeeper, Madan Mohan Pandey. This reporter, who was present that night, saw how helpless Pandey was in the face of the attack by the wild cat.

“I would still say the fault lies with us, we are encroaching into the tiger’s territory. The one which attacked me was a tigress, she had three cubs. It was a genuine mother’s worry,” Pandey told a Uttarakhand video blog 17 years after the incident.

Pandey, who suffered serious injuries to his head, shoulder and left leg, said guards often get flak for tiger attacks on humans but people (villagers and tourists) must realise that they need to give the big cats space because it is their territory.

“I repeatedly told the forest guards not to declare the tigress a maneater. I had seen her killing deer in the grasslands of Dhikala with her cubs. She was certainly not a maneater, she was just stressed because of the movement of tourists in Dhikala, and all the noise.” 

“The tiger is never at fault,” said Pandey.

But stray incidents of tiger attacks have happened in Corbett for almost five years. Consider these cases.

In 2017, a woman and her father-in-law were killed by a tiger in a forest close to Corbett park. The bodies were recovered from deep inside the forest in the afternoon after a forest team tranquilised the big cat. 

In November 2018, a tigress mauled a 20-year-old man to death in Corbett Tiger Reserve’s Dhikala zone.

In 2019, 23-year-old Sohan Singh, a forest watcher, was mauled to death by a tiger in the Kalagarh area of the tiger reserve. 

The same year, a leopard attacked and injured 23-year-old Uma Arya in the Okhalkanda area of Nainital district’s South Goula forest range.

In September 2019, a 40-year-old was killed by a tiger in the forests of Nainital district while a leopard killed a four-year-old girl in Bageshwar district. In the same month, a leopard had killed a four-year-old girl in the Garud area of Nainital district.

Dense forests and tigers in Corbett attract thousands of tourists every year, but the area is also seeing a growing man-animal conflict. The number of tigers in Corbett has increased, and so has the human population in the neighbouring villages. 

Home to over 250 tigers, Corbett has the highest density of big cats in the country. In October, a maneater was killed near Ramnagar after a massive 40-day search.

In most of India’s tiger reserves, villagers create a furore if anyone from the village is killed by a wild animal. There have been occasions when a villager killed by a bear is mistaken for a tiger victim. Often elephants, wild boars, leopards get caught in this huge animal-human conflict.

Tiger experts in India are unanimous that conflict between people and the big cats is one of the main threats to the long-term survival of the national animal. A WWF-UNEP report released last July said the following: “Human-wildlife conflict - when struggles arise from people and animals coming into contact and that is the biggest challenge of all tiger reserves.”

Raghu Chundawat, India’s top tiger expert, tells Moneycontrol in an interview that there is a serious need to build new models of conservation for tiger habitats outside of protected areas (PAs). He calls it the new, inclusive approach. 

In the last four decades India has achieved significant success in conserving  nature and wild biodiversity through its protected area network, says Chundawat. “These are also areas with human inhabitants, so we need  conservation approaches and models that are inclusive of people and applicable  in these landscapes. We envisage a concession approach, outside the present Wildlife Protection Act provisions, where, under an overall conservation agreement, the managing committee will decide the actions and activities possible within the concession area.”

But currently, such a format does not exist in India. So, whose job is to save the wildlife?

There’s another crisis: those living on the fringes (the villagers or tribals) routinely sell their land to resort owners who have scant respect for the wildlife.

- Anjana Gosain, CEO, Tiger Trust.

Forest guards, claims Chundawat, are largely at a loss in their conservation efforts and are in the crosshair of villagers living close to the forests. And then, tiger habitats are routinely cut by roads and railways, fields, factories and mines.

India is home to more than half of the world's 3,900 tigers living in the wild. The World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) says since the beginning of the 20th century over 95 percent of the world tiger population has been lost.

“A lot needs to be done about education and increasing awareness, India is yet to demarcate wildlife constituencies,” says Chundawat.

The rules are archaic. Eco-tourism in tiger reserves has become so over and loosely used by industry professionals that it is in danger of losing its value, Chundawat wrote in a study paper. 

“Most of the wilderness areas are under single ownership of the government forest department. Individual land ownership is small because it is highly regulated through a land ceiling act. Because of this unusual situation, nature conservation has been entirely dependent on government policies with very little support from outside, including tourism. 

"As a result, conservation in India is more or less limited to within the boundaries of the protected area network,” says the paper.

An interesting perspective is offered by Anjana Gosain, one of the top tiger experts and CEO of Tiger Trust that was started by Kailash Sankhala, the first director of Project Tiger. She says the tiger range within India is diminishing. “The situation in India is very different. The biggest menace is commercialisation of land on the fringes of the reserve forests, unplanned tourism and free movement inside the forests,” says Gosain. 

Hence, the idea is to reverse this trend and expand its area of occupancy, argues Gosain.

“There’s another crisis, those living on the fringes - the villagers or tribals - routinely sell their land to resort owners who have scant respect for the wildlife. This needs to be changed. People who have lived near the forests need to be made a part of the tiger conservation process. And remember if you are asking them to leave their land, it's a voluntary act and they are not compensated enough,” Gosain says. 

For the records, the population of 2,900 tigers in India is scattered across many smaller isolated populations and extinction threats are impacting all these small and isolated populations simultaneously. 

The tiger needs 20 to 25 square miles for movement. And that space is shrinking.

- Ullas Karanth

Top tiger expert Kishore Rithe, who has worked extensively in tiger reserves in Maharashtra, says the increase in the number of forest guards in Corbett is heartening news.

Rithe adds there is growing need for and benefit of participatory models, because the economy of villages in and around the reserves is based on agriculture, labour, livestock and forest produce but this economy isn’t in good shape. For centuries, there was a harmony between nature and communities. “Ideal conservation should rebuild the economy for local communities so that it reverses the ecological degradation of tiger forests. This must happen,” says Rithe.

Seasoned tiger expert Ullas Karanth feels tiger-human conflict is not an all-India phenomenon and its happening in some particular reserves. “The tiger needs 20-25 square miles for movement. And that space is shrinking. Attacks are happening in the Tadoba-Chandrapur region where tribals and villagers were routinely going deep into the forest. Now they have been put under some guidelines,” Karanth says.

Experts say in India, territorial forests are managed with commercial forestry interest but it is not a profitable venture for the government. Over the last decade, the Indian government has spent Rs 2,000 crore more than it has generated from tiger forests.  

“Tiger conservation has to be handled at the policy level, the Centre and the states need to get involved. It is serious business,” says Karanth.

So discussions to protect the wild cats must happen between the government and wildlife experts, everyone is unanimous.

Some discussions did take place. Last October, Union Minister of State for Forest and Environment Ashwini Kumar Choubey visited the tiger reserve and hinted the name of the forest could be changed soon. 

Choubey even wrote in the Corbett museum guest book that the name of Jim Corbett National Park should be changed to Ramganga National Park. Jim Corbett Park director Rahul confirmed this but declined to comment further.

Maybe Lord Ram, the beloved god and avatar of Vishnu, could eventually turn out to be the ultimate saviour of the wild cats, especially if his name gets linked to India’s biggest tiger reserve. That would be music to the ears of the minister, and the government.