NEW DELHI // Indian forestry officials are tackling a surge of tiger attacks that have left at least 12 people dead and terrorised villages across the country.
Near the Tamil Nadu town of Ooty, a hunt for a man-eating tiger has entered its third week, with more than 300 forestry and police officers trying to trap the animal before it kills for a fourth time.
In the Sambhal district of Uttar Pradesh, the forestry department is searching for another of the approximately 1,700 wild tigers left in India. This tiger has killed seven people since late December.
And in the Western Ghats mountain range, at least eight people have been attacked by tigers over the past seven weeks, with two of them being eaten.
Ravi Chellam, a Bangalore-based wildlife conservationist said that in a grim sense, the tiger attacks are a sign that India’s conservation efforts are succeeding. “The populations of tigers are building up, and they have begun to need more space. You can only crunch them into small enclaves for so long.”
The number of tiger attacks in India has risen over the past decade. While there are not reliable estimates of the exact number of attacks, experts, such as Mr Chellam, say that as the population of tigers has risen, so have the number of attacks.
In the early 20th century, India was believed to have nearly 100,000 tigers. But those numbers fell sharply because of poaching, hunting and dwindling forest cover. In 2008, a nationwide census counted only 1,411 adult tigers.
Successful attempts were made to increase their population. But now a lack of space makes the tigers wander out of their habitats, encountering human settlements almost immediately, Mr Chellam said. Also, he said, villages are increasingly drawing closer to the edge of the forest, encroaching on the tiger’s habitat.
“Young animals and old animals get pushed out of their enclaves, which is when they begin to attack humans. It’s a worrying trend.”
Since January 4, the Ooty tiger has killed three villagers, spreading fear across the region. Tea harvesting has ceased, village schools have been shut, and tourists stay away.
The state government has responded with a system of camera traps as well as frequent elephant-mounted patrols to track the tiger in hopes of tranquillising it. Camera images have shown the tiger’s pawprints to be stained with blood, indicating that it might already be injured in some way.
On Friday, forestry officials announced that they had corralled the tiger within a space of 500 metres. “We are on the right track,” said K Kandasamy, chief conservator of forests in Tamil Nadu.
“This is the same animal. It is elusive but weak. We are confident of getting him.”
In Uttar Pradesh, three hunters were dispatched to track and capture the tiger there, which began its killing spree with an attack on a 65-year-old man on December 29.
But so far there has been no success.
“It must still be hungry as it has been running without rest and adequate food,” said Rupak De, a forestry official in the state.
Mr Chellam called for more long-term planning to prevent future attacks.
“Right now, nobody is thinking about the need to expand habitat areas to keep up with the population of tigers as it increases,” he said.
Conservation officials should plan for the expansion of protected habitats to keep up with the growing number of tigers, said Mr Chellam.
But Daleep Akoi, who owns a tourist lodge in the Corbett National Park, a nature reserve known for its tiger population, in the northern state of Uttarakhand, said he did not think that restricting tourism in these parks was a solution.
“If you remove tourism, you’ll lose hundreds of thousands of livelihoods of villagers in these areas,” he said. “It’ll turn them back into hunters and poachers.”
What was needed, he said, was more stringent enforcement of the existing regulations.
He pointed out that several hotels were being built illegally in corridors in nature reserves where tigers are known to wander, increasing the chances of encounters between tigers and humans.
Many of these corridors ran through what Mr Akoi called the “fringe forest,” referring to area where wildlife parks gradually meet unprotected land
“Whatever forest land exists in these fringes, the officials are not looking after it as they should be,” he said. “Once a population of tigers becomes healthy within a wildlife park, it’ll start spreading to the fringe forest. And if that isn’t well protected, that’s where the tigers will come into conflict with man.”
ssubramanian@thenational.ae