Here, danger lurks at every step
ON THE PROWL About 10,000 people in over 50 villages, adjoining Corbett, live under the constant threat of tiger attacks COEXISTENCE WITH TIGERS
Spotting a tiger is normal for people residing in villages around Corbett Tiger Reserve. Children spot them while going to school every morning, women while collecting grass and men while working in the fields.
The threat emerges only when it attacks you. Like when Hemu (33), of Karanpur village, spotted a tigress in the paddy fields on September 6. He went numb on seeing it sitting on top of his 60-year-old mother Govindi Devi. She was covered in blood while the “face of death” stood a few metres from him.
“I couldn’t do anything about it. I stood there shocked and grieved,” Hemu told HT later.
Television channels flashed the news, and papers carried it the next day.
While media may have laid the matter to rest after that, the incident raised an important issue—co-existence with the wild cats.
Nearly 10,000 people in over 50 villages adjoining Corbett live under the threat of being attacked every day.
Lata (25), a resident of Gaurakhpur village said, “A sum of `5 lakh is provided as compensation if a person is killed. Can this compensation bring back life? The tiger kills people. And the department takes several days in deciding whether to kill the man-eater or not. Is human life so cheap?”
In India, over `10 crore is paid every year for human and crop loss by marauding animals and the government data shows that the compensation being paid is increasing every year, an indication of rising man-animal conflict.
The issue has of late become a major one near tiger habitats such as Kanha, Bandhavgarh, Sunderban, Tadoba-Andhari, Nagarhole, Pench across the country.
A report of Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII) says, “India harbours the highest number of tigers and has the largest number of man-eating cases.”
It noted that Tadoba-Andhari and Sundarbans, where local people frequent the forests to collect firewood and other products, were major areas of human-tiger conflict.
Amidst calls for killing the problem animal, observers have stressed on the gravity of the issue.
Animal activist Gauri Maulekhi noted that the word “coexistence” has deprived the villagers of their right to live.
Tiger expert at Wildlife Institute of India (WII) Qamar Qureshi stressed that co-occurrence shall not be taken for coexistence.
“It is easy for an activist to romanticise the term ‘coexistence’ while sitting secured in his air-conditioned chamber while a villager has lost a family member in an encounter,” he said.
“The only solution to sustain the angst of villagers around tiger habitats is to remove the ‘problem animal’. Efforts should be done towards conserving the species and not an individual animal,” he said.
Corbett reserve, which has the most number and highest density of tigers—215 residing in an average of 6 sqkm area, has seen a number of attacks in the past.
A tigress has killed two persons and mauled two others in September. Rohit Kumar (18), of Lakhanpur village on the outskirts of Corbett, was critically injured in a tiger attack on September 5, a day before Hemu’s mother was killed.
Earlier, on April 8, a tiger had killed a forest guard Hari Ram in Khinanauli range of Corbett and in March, a man was killed in Kalagarh range and another was attacked in Dhela range.
In 2010, a tiger killed five persons in Sunderkhal village that was killed in January 2011. Since 1936, when Corbett came into existence, only two tigers have been declared man-eaters.