The tigers of Corbett and Dudhwa follow their food chain into Terai cane fields, some to die
Raja Anand wasn't exactly surprised when he found two dead tiger cubs on his sugarcane farm. We're becoming accustomed to tigers straying on to our fields, is all that he said. As for the cubs, they had merely come out for a walk out of their jungle habitat with their Mama. She left them nestled cosily among the stalks while she went out for a hunt. And never came back. For two days the cubs huddled together. Starvation and the chill claimed their lives on the third day.
The denizens of the Dudhwa and Corbett National Parks are struck by an odd wanderlust. Increasingly, they're straying out of the deep woods and prowling through the neighbouring sugarcane fields, in some cases making it their habitat. But these adventures usually meet a gruesome end. Witness the UP forest department's inventory of 12 cases of tiger deaths in cane farms adjoining the parks. The death of the two cubs is only the latest in the series.
Winters have always been cruel to these felines who now form a whole new breed referred to as the cane tigers. The first such death occurred on the night of December 2, 1997, when a poacher killed a tiger living on the Central Seed Farm, around the forest near Bahraich. Then again, on January 30, 1998, one tigress in the cane fields of Santoshpur village, 9 km away from Ramnagar, was reported dead due to poisoning. Poison also consumed four tigers on January 24, 1998, on the periphery of the Corbett Park. On December 31, 1998, a tigress and her three cubs were poisoned to death in cane crops in Kalupurwa village, near Dudhwa. Says chief wildlife warden Dr R.L. Singh: It's becoming a serious problem and we're working very hard to settle it.
According to researchers Rahul Shukla, a history lecturer, and Yogesh Kumar, an ias official, there are three kinds of cane tigers. The first kind comprises the casual visitors. Among them there are those who choose to stick to the cane farms. And those who've lived in these fields for more than a generation. The duo claim to have done the first established research on this category of tigers. However, says Shukla, It has not been possible for us to give any specific census regarding these tigers. Singh and Rupak De, director, Dudhwa Park, disagree. They opine that only the first category exists. Says De: In case the other two types existed, we would've heard of these wild cats throughout the year.
Cane farms in the Terai region have always been a temptation for predators ever since organised plantation replaced the older grassy marshlands. Over the past decades herbivores too are leaving the forest in search of fodder. The grass in Dudhwa has turned unpalatable. In fact, unwanted coarse and inedible grass is fast covering a vast surface area of these forests. Lantana (commonly referred to as Ban Maruwa), Themeda and Arundo are fast replacing tender sweet grass and herbs. Most of the swamp and hog deer and wild boars have strolled outside the forest range to settle in nearby cultivated fields. Also the elephants who've left the neighbouring forests to feed on the cane shoots. Left with little choice but to follow their prey, the tigers too have landed in the cane farms.
Once in the cane farms, the tigers seek refuge in the tall cane shoots, which they find a good substitute for the tall reed grass of the dense jungles. The tigers happily settle down in these farms considering them to be an extension of their original homes, explains Raja Ranjit Bhargava, former chairman of the UP Chapter of the World Wildlife Fund. The thick growth of vegetation at all levels and the flowering fronds filter the direct sunlight, leaving the area comfortably soft-lit for these tigers. There are also as many blue bottle flies, a constant irritant to the tigers in these farms as in the forest. The moist soil all round the year also lends comfort to these big cats, who have least tolerance for heat.
These tigers therefore adapt themselves to the fluctuating heights of sugarcane strands, feeling relatively undisturbed until the start of the harvest. Even then, these jungle cats stealthily move on to another better-equipped farm. They have a tendency to move ahead instead of retreating, explain environmentalists. But their comfort is short-lived and their lives in constant danger. The fear of felines, if not the lure of easy money, drives men to kill the beasts.
Poison is the preferred mode of revenge for the villagers whose cattle these tigers kill for lack of other prey. Instead of reporting the frequent attacks on cattle to the forest department, the farmers take the law into their own hands. Aware of the beast's instinct to return to their kill, the villagers spray substantial amounts of pesticides like B-G Gama, Lintoff and Paradon, on the half-eaten carcass. The hungry tigers consume it and die. Only in cases where the villagers do not properly dispose of the predator's carcass does the news reach the forest officials.
The officials on their part, for reasons best known to them, had been sidetracking the issue for long. It was only in April 1998 that the state's principal forest secretary, P.L. Punia, conceded that such a breed did exist: The study of sugarcane tigers is a fascinating revelation of a shocking fact. And since that revelation, the forest department has launched a series of initiatives to protect the tiger (see box). After all, the cane tigers are the face of a myopic conservation policy gone awry.