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Tigress killing kicks up a debate
THE RECENT killing of a man-eater has kicked up a debate among wildlife activists. Internationally acclaimed wildlife activist Billy Arjan Singh has already condemned the killing and blamed the Forest Department for having shoddily handled the matter.
THE RECENT killing of a man-eater has kicked up a debate among wildlife activists. Internationally acclaimed wildlife activist Billy Arjan Singh has already condemned the killing and blamed the Forest Department for having shoddily handled the matter.
He went on saying that the department should have shown restraint at the time of killing the tigress.
However, Aqueel Farooqui, another wildlife activist, said that the prevailing condition might have forced the senior forest officers to kill the tigress. Talking to HT, he said that the tigress was already declared a man-eater as she had killed four persons: Three in the forests and another in a village adjacent to Kishanpur sanctuary.
Reacting to the killing, wildlife activist Mukuljit Singh said that the killing of the tigress in the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve brought to light the insensitivity of the forest officials towards the protection of big cats. In stead of killing, the forest officials, as a first step, should have tranquilised the tigress.
Besides, Singh put a question mark over the claim that the animal was injured. He said that before the last kill, she was in good health.
Therefore, there was no reason to call tigress as severely injured, he added.
He wanted to know if anybody had seen her before being killed. He said that the tigress killed three human beings in the forest and the fourth on the periphery of the village, Singh said.
Vikranth Nath, an environmentalist, said that the rising incidents of man eating were posing a threat to tigers. However, he made it clear that as he was not present on the spot when the tigress was killed, he was not in a position to comment on the issue.
