The Man-eater of Kyari - Page 3
by Gideon Egger

The sambar killed by the tigress was moved into a trap by the forest department.- 
© Gideon Egger 2004.

When the representatives arrived it was clear that they were extremely upset and angry about the tigress' transgressions and simply wanted her dead immediately. Their frustration was understandable, but it put Mr. Rasaily in a terrible bind. He tried to offer succor and to assure the elders that he and his men were working to capture the tigress and to determine whether or not she was the same cat who had killed the man in Gebuwa-dol. But what the representatives really wanted to hear was simply a promise to kill the tigress or permission to do so themselves--and this he could not offer. For apart from the threat of outright extinction, the genetic health of the Royal Bengal tiger is now also imperiled as populations have become increasingly fragmented and isolated from each other and consequently inbred. The loss of a single tiger, therefore, represents not just a lost individual but the loss of priceless genetic information and diversity. With so few tigers left in India (and, of course, so few tigers left in the world) the Forest Department simply cannot go around indiscriminately killing tigers just to placate the locals, even when there is a man-eater on the loose.

Sargam Rasaily and Ramaknt Tiwari at Camp Kyari. - 
© Gideon Egger 2004.

Man-eating is extremely rare among tigers and except for a small anomalous group of tigers in the Sundarbans, does not seem to be a behavior ever practiced by healthy individuals. Jim Corbett, who shot his first leopard when he was just ten years old, became one of India's greatest hunters and was frequently tapped to kill man-eating tigers and leopards that had escaped the rifles of lesser Shikari. When he examined the bodies of the man-eaters he had killed, he realized that almost all of them were sick, injured, or too old and frail to tackle their usual quarry. In other words, humans were an easy target and a ready substitute for the prey they could no longer fell but were never a first choice or preference. Often he found preexisting, debilitating wounds from inexperienced or careless hunters who had damaged but not finished-off the great cats. These were literally man made man-eaters. 

Today, as the human population of India has exploded to more than a billion and the tiger population has shrunk to an upper mete of, at most, perhaps two thousand, tiger habitats have been squeezed and stressed by human activity and agriculture in those few isolated archipelagoes of jungle that have not been destroyed outright. Poor land management and overgrazing have destroyed huge tracks of land and have led to the shockingly common occurrence of domestic cattle being grazed inside the national parks. In other areas there are no buffer zones around the parks so that the boundary of a park may literally be the outside fence of a cattle pasture. In some places there is no fence. Perhaps not surprisingly, cattle predation has become a major issue as injured and old tigers who have been displaced by younger healthier animals discover that the ubiquitous domestic cattle represent an easy kill and a ready source of meat. The problem is such a common cause of friction between humans and wildlife that the Indian government has an official Cattle Compensation Program to reimburse farmers for cattle killed by tigers. Man-eating, however, remains extremely rare but is, of course, a much more serious problem when it does occur as there is no compensation that can make up for a lost family member. Needless to say it represents the worst-case scenario for any forest official and Sargam Rasaily was right in the middle of it. Meanwhile, there was always a danger that the man-eater would strike again and further exacerbate an already dangerous and stressful situation.

© 2004 Forever Tigers
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