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Editorial Posted On Thursday, July 29, 2010 | The cause of tiger deaths also lies in the social organization and land tenure system of a tiger population
The tiger is probably the most magnificent wild mammal on this planet and is aptly described as the "spirit of the Indian jungle". Tiger conservation, however, has been under the public scanner over the past several years, and as per the last country-wide estimation of 2006, tigers are now mostly restricted to only good wildlife protected areas. With a rather grim scenario of tiger conservation in the country, and the central and state governments' efforts in the sharp focus of the national and international communities, each death of tigers in the wild unfailingly makes headlines in the media and is discussed heatedly. It is more so if the death occurs in a prominent wildlife protected area. Understandably, the management of the concerned national park or tiger reserve has to go on back foot and receive a lot of flak from all quarters. Over the years, tiger conservation has reached such a pass that even if a tiger dies a natural death, it is never believed by public, including non-governmental individuals also involved in this venture. While tiger poaching cannot be ruled out even in the best of wildlife protected areas located in a vast sea of humanity, the public never acknowledges that tigers, being mortal, may also die naturally due to sickness, infections or grave injuries sustained in infighting. Park managers often have very hard time explaining about the "naturalness" of such deaths, and there is hardly any taker!
Kanha, for instance, is one of the excellent wildlife protected areas of the country and boasts of a glorious conservation history of wildlife, specially tigers. This national park, however, has continually been in news for some time for the "natural" deaths of tigers, specially due to infighting among tigers or cannibalistic predation. Stringent and pro-active protection and systematic wildlife management practices over the years have ensured excellent natal areas for tigers and an excellent prey base in Kanha. Some parts of Kanha are high tiger density areas, which means, as per experts' opinions, these areas have no less than 8 adult tigers per 100 sq.km. Like our human society where people are bound together through persistent interactions, status, roles and networking, this tiger population also survives under a complex social organization, not civil, of course! Each adult resident tiger commands a large area as his home range that is roamed about over a relatively long period for his needs. Within this home range lies his territory that the tiger very aggressively defends against other intruding tigers through scent marking of spurted urine, vocalization, scraping and raking etc. The territories of adult male tigers are generally non-overlapping. The territory of an adult tiger, however, overlaps with 3-4, or even more, adult tigresses. These territorial resident tigers are usually not less than 4 years old and have already undergone the transient phase after separating from their mothers after around two years of age. In this backdrop of social organization, there exists a land tenure system whereby older and weaker tigers are gradually spaced out by younger and powerful ones to establish their territories and mate with tigresses.
Now this whole social organization and land tenure system automatically gives rise to four broad conditions in a tiger population. First, a transient tiger, separated from his mother, a novice, younger and behaviorally too much explorative and relatively less skilled gets into fights with either another transient or a powerful resident tiger and gets killed, sometimes after a fierce fighting. Second, two resident tigers may fight for territoriality or over a female and the weaker may get killed on the spot or injured seriously to die later of his wounds. Third, a resident tiger may kill one or all the cubs, usually not more than three, of a tigress, not sired by him, so that he may mate with the mother tigress to produce his own progenies. Infanticide has become a well-known behavior in a tiger population. Generally, however, a tiger does not kill his own cubs, and is also known to sometimes share a kill with the tigress and cubs. Lastly, a tiger may also kill all the small cubs of a tigress to make her come into estrous for mating. In most cases, such tigresses are known to mate with these tigers and produce cubs. It is an established fact that no tigress with cubs will come into estrous and mate with a tiger. Besides, small cubs also have a wide range of enemies, including leopards, hyenas, jackals and even snakes, and they may also fall prey to them.
In this way, a few tigers of different ages may die every year in a high tiger density area. Nothing can be done about this, and evolutionary intricacies and genetics have strong bearings on this phenomenon. As tigers have been being closely monitored for many years in Kanha through tracking by elephants, photography and analysis of indirect evidence, most tigers and their relationships within the social organization are well known to the Kanha management. At times even the management may predict the death of a certain tiger under one of the above conditions. Besides, Kanha has such a strong and reliable system of patrolling camps located all over the tiger reserve, specially in the national park, complemented with intensive patrols throughout the year that almost no tiger death goes undetected.
Rakesh Shukla
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Friday, September 03, 2010