Bihar: 'All problem tigers not man-eaters, Valmiki Tiger Reserve requires fool proof monitoring'

- By Samir Kumar Sinha
Human-tiger conflicts are common in the state's lone Valmiki Tiger Reserve (VTR). The tiger population in VTR dropped to an alarming level owing to various factors, including commercial forestry until 1994, forest centric protection and ignoring wildlife and lack of habitat management for herbivores.
Frequent hunting by villagers and the powerful people took a terrible toll on wild animals like wild pigs and deer species that tigers eat.

Locals retaliated by poisoning livestock killed by tigers owing to a lack of natural wild prey. It was a time of poaching big cats to meet the international demand and the poorly guarded porous border with Nepal made the task of illicit trade easier in this area. Bandits and kidnapper gangs ruled the jungle until the early 2000s, making it difficult for the forest administration to guard the area.
Efforts by the state government, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) of India and the NGOs have transformed the situation. The VTR has 40-45 tigers now. Tigers also need space, which has diminished owing to river erosion, railways, roads and increasing habitation areas, notably in the Madanpur forest block and the western forest block, which is disconnected from the larger portion of the VTR.
Almost the entire forested area of the VTR is notified as a tiger reserve, delineated into core and buffer zones, which hardly matters for a tiger. Ironically, there is no effective buffer forest between the tiger reserve boundary and the agricultural landscape.
The Kosil forest block in Harnatanr and Chiutaha ranges, where human-tiger conflicts are frequent, are a suboptimal habitat for tiger prey due to natural factors such as undulating terrain, small grassy areas, poor soil and scarcity of water sources, as well as anthropogenic pressure from village in Done Valley and along southern boundary. Tigers used the forest block occasionally in the past. The increase in the tiger population has changed how they utilize the landscape area and interact with humans.
Since tigers are territorial, prime-aged tigers occupying the best habitats push the sub-adult and old tigers to poorer habitats. These pushed off tigers occupy the degraded or suboptimal habitats and find cover and easy prey like domestic livestock in the abutting sugarcane farms, which covers a vast expanse in West Champaran district. These tigers are either inexperienced hunters or old individuals unable to hunt wild prey. Territorial fights may incapacitate these marginalized individuals both temporarily and permanently to depend on easier food like domestic livestock. This situation perfectly sets the ground for human-tiger conflicts.
For tigers, domestic livestock is food, but human beings are not. However, behavioural anomalies, physical incapability and mistaking a human being as a potential prey cause attacks. Such attacks do not necessarily mean that the tiger has become a 'man-eater', a term loosely used for a problem tiger. According to the NTCA, a tiger has become a man-eater if it seeks, stalks and waits for humans and eats the dead body.
The need is to address the situation proactively. Removing the problem tiger, if it has not turned into a man-eater, is not an effective solution. After removal of one tiger, another one may occupy the vacant territory. It is essential to realize that the problem will persist in the VTR landscape, similar to what is happening in Dudhwa-Katarniaghat-Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh, where tigers live and breed in sugarcane fields and human-tiger conflict has become a serious concern.
VTR should develop and implement a system of foolproof monitoring of tigers in such habitats and send early warnings to nearby residents, in case a tiger is on the prowl in their vicinity. Preparing locals to avoid encounters in high-conflict areas is the most critical approach. Landscape-wide human behaviour change campaign is needed. In agricultural land bordering the tiger reserve, small-height crops could replace sugarcane so that the tigers do not find a suitable area outside the forest.
(The writer is joint director, Wildlife Trust of India, and has worked in VTR for about 15 years)