No death for maneaters

None of the human killing tigers in the fields of Pilibhit will face death, the government has decided.

Updated on: Aug 31, 2010, 01:11:20 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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None of the human killing tigers in the fields of Pilibhit will face death, the government has decided.

Instead, they will be relocated deep into the forest having strong prey base.

Uttar Pradesh's forest department officials have identified a tigress with a cub in Kishanpur area and another tiger near Pilibhit believed to be behind slaughter of seven persons in the last one month.

All the victims were killed when they ventured inside the forest area to collect wild vegetables, which proliferate during monsoon. Their partially eaten bodies were discovered after their family members reported them missing.

Similar tiger-related human deaths have been reported from Ranthambore, Rajasthan and Tadoba reserve in Maharashtra.

Heavy rains this monsoon can be a probable reason. "In Kishanpur area, the tigress and her cub had been spotted near the sugarcane cultivation (which looks green like a grassland for tigers)," said Rajesh Gopal, member secretary of National Tiger Conservation Authority, who will be visiting Pilibhit to oversee the operations to catch the killer tigers.

NCTA officials, who have reviewed reports from Rajasthan and Maharashtra, said: "In none of the cases tiger entered a human habitation and attacked a person. It was only when a person confronted the tiger in fields or fringe forestland, the big cat attacked."

The NCTA has already called experts from Wildlife Institute of India and Wildlife Trust of India to monitor the relocation, likely to start this week.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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