https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...r-supreme-court.html



Hunters of Man-Eating Tigress Can Shoot to Kill, Indian Court Rules

By Jeffrey Gettleman and Hari Kumar
Sept. 11, 2018

NEW DELHI — In India, you can’t just shoot a tiger.

Even if it’s a man-eater, and even if you’re working for a government agency, many strict requirements must be met before one of the endangered animals can legally be killed.

Armed with those regulations, wildlife advocates on Tuesday entered India’s Supreme Court in hopes of saving a female tiger known as T-1, who has evaded capture four times and is believed to have killed 13 people.

The 5-year-old tigress has been stalking a scruffy patch of central India for more than two years, mauling herders and farmers from poor villages, along with cows and horses.

She dragged some of her victims out of cotton fields by the neck and left them in shreds. Three people were killed in August, villagers are terrified and pressure is rising for the authorities to kill the creature. The hunt could begin this week.



Forest rangers have been unequivocal: T-1 is a man-eater.

But wildlife advocates say she has killed only in self-defense, and they pleaded before a packed courtroom on Tuesday for the justices to spare her life — to no avail.

“All the people killed have been killed in the forest,” Anand Grover, a lawyer for the wildlife advocates, told the justices.


“You go into that area on your own risk,” he added. “How can you hold the tiger responsible?”

Forestry officials passed an order last week saying they preferred to capture the tigress, but they would shoot to kill if that proved impossible. Indian wildlife advocates frequently challenge orders like these in court, often leading to hearings that are essentially mini-trials on the tiger’s guilt or innocence.

At Tuesday’s hearing, the government said there were no other suspects. T-1 was the only tiger roaming around the area at the time of each killing.



A lawyer for the government pointed to the forensic evidence, saying that camera traps, pugmarks (tiger footprints), eyewitness accounts and DNA tests (taken from saliva left on the victims’ wounds) linked T-1 to several deaths, possibly more than a dozen.



The tigress has also consumed human flesh, the lawyers said — an important criterion. As India’s official guidelines put it: “A differentiation should be made between ‘human kill’ due to chance encounters and ‘habituated man-eaters.’”

“No other animal could have consumed these people,” said Kartik Shukul, the government lawyer. “There aren’t even any leopards in the area.”

The activists tried to argue that the tigress hadn’t eaten all of her victims, and that the villagers were at fault for venturing into her territory in the first place. The activists made those same arguments in a state court last week and lost. In a last-ditch effort, they appealed to the Supreme Court.

A two-judge panel listened to the back-and-forth for a half-hour — much more time than they spent on many other cases Tuesday. Then they upheld the forestry officials’ plan, which allows them kill T-1 if a concerted effort to capture her fails.

The hope is to bait her with a chunk of fresh buffalo meat, tranquilize her and then put her in a zoo. Forest rangers are closing in, with teams of sharpshooters, veterinarians and specially trained elephants converging on the area in the eastern part of Maharashtra state where she has been hunting.

The rangers plan to ride the elephants’ backs into the bush (elephants are better for the job than 4X4 trucks, they say), in a military-style operation they expect to begin this week.


But there are a few complications.

For starters, it’s much harder to tranquilize a tiger than to kill it. The range of a tranquilizing dart gun is only 25 meters, experts said, — nothing compared to the 300 meters from which a high-powered bullet can be effectively fired.

Also, it’s the end of the monsoon season. That means T-1’s area is now lush and green; actually, it’s totally overgrown, maybe even too much so for the elephants. In previous capture operations, the tigress stole into thickets of lantana bushes and vanished.

And T-1 is a mother. In the middle of her killing spree, she gave birth to two fuzzy cubs. The forestry department’s plan calls for the cubs, around 9 months old, to be tranquilized, not killed.

“The tigress has just been trying to protect her cubs,” said Sarita Subramaniam, one of the activists who left the Supreme Court visibly disappointed Tuesday afternoon. “As a mother, I would do the same thing. I’d kill anyone who enters my home.”

“When it comes to man-animal conflict,” she fumed, “it’s all about humans, humans, humans.”

Is this the same tigress that was killing in 2014.

The last I read a out that tigeress was that she had not been killed or captured.

Sounds like a hunt that may include the Three Stooges. Saeed, why don't you video this hunt for us?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...d-killing-13-people/



Top Indian tiger hunter called in to find beast thought to have killed 13.

The tigeress I am thinking about has killed 12 as of 2014. She came out of Corbett National Forest.

The last I saw they were trying like hell to catch her instead of kill her bc she was breeding age female. She was killing across a 159 mile treck from the Park to Himalayan foothills. Her being what I am referring to as the 2014 man eater.

I love tigers and unstand that there are only more or less 3000 Bengal Tigers left, but when these creatures start eating humans it becomes part of there killing culture and it is taught on to the young.

It do think that this is the same tigress bc the article qoutes a Gov. Lawyer saying pugmarks and dna taken from viticm wounds link this tiger to more than a dozen victims. I cannot find anything about the 2014 man eater?

Kathi do you know anything?

It is named T1. She deserves a better name. In the old days man eaters had good names like The Bachelor of Powalgarh.

M

It is awful ridiculous then that this one tiger has been killing humans since 2014 and the Government is now allowing her to be killed.

I do not blame the tiger from the comfort of my 1st world home for man eating, but I do not blame nor disagree with anyone wanting and yes needing to kill her for the sake of human life. It is just as natural to kill her as she is killing those who have to eek out an existence on the edges of wilderness. Wilderness we want to remain.

In more hillbilly terms. I do not hold a grudge against raccoons for getting in my corn field. So, they should not hold anything personal when I shoot them for the corn.

The Times article quoting the “conservationist” as they go into the forest it is not the tiger’s fault is what is wrong with this world. Fault has nothing to do with it. Human life and this tigers no learned behavior to target human life is what matters.

https://www.thetrentonline.com...-eaten-10-villagers/



LHeym500,

Is this the tiger?



Indians In Hot Chase Of Man-Eating Tigress That Has Eaten 10 People

By Telegraph UK on February 11, 2014



Hunters are tracking a man-eating tigress which has killed at least nine people during a 150-mile rampage from a national park in northern India to villages in the Himalayan foothills.

According to forestry officials, the adult tigress may have killed and eaten a tenth victim on Sunday, a 50-year-old farmer who was mauled as he collected firewood in Kalgarh village along the border of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand hill state.



The big cat was chased away by villagers who discovered her eating her victim. She had eaten parts of his legs and abdomen when she was chased away by spade wielding locals.
Forestry officials and tiger experts now fear the tigress will not stop killing humans until she is “removed” – either captured or killed.

The tigress strayed from Corbett National Park to begin her six-week killing spree on December 29th, when she pounced on a 21-year-old man who had wandered into sugar cane fields in Moradabad district to do his morning ablutions. She claimed its second victim a week later on January 5th and two days later a third, a teenage girl.



Until then, the tigress had not eaten its victims. But over the following days it killed another two villagers, in both cases consuming body partsand apparently developing a taste for human flesh. It then disappeared back into the national park, but emerged 16 days later to kill again.

Officials said the tiger had crossed several major national highways, a river and moved through villages on the prowl for human prey.

Belinda Wright, one of India’s leading tiger conservationists, said officials had told her the first nine victims had been confirmed as those of a single, breeding tigress which may be wounded or injured: the pawprints are identical but uneven which suggests she may have a limp.

Officials said it was possible the tenth victim may have been killed by a different tiger.

Ms Wright said this latest man-eater’s nine or ten victims made it one of the most prolific in recent years, although some of those pursued by Jim Corbett, the legendary tiger hunter turned conservationist for whom the national park is named, were said to have killed and eaten more than 400 people.

She blamed the worsening “human-animal conflict” in India for the latest killings and said the spread of mobile phones has been a factor. After one of the killings a crowd of thousands of local people arrived to track down the tigress and disturbed its retreat back into the forest. “Initially we had a man-killer, maybe that can be put down to these crowds. And then she started eating people and unfortunately when that happens there is no alternative but to remove it, it can no longer be a wild tiger,” she said.

Both she and local forestry officials hope the tigress can be captured rather than killed. “There are so few breeding tigresses that every one is precious. They can survive with the loss of a few young or male tigers, but not feeding females, it’s a tragedy,” she added.

Kamlesh Kumar, Conservator of Forest in Moradabad , Uttar Pradesh, said he believed the tigress is four years old. “It has strayed from Jim Corbett Park and travelled 120 kilometres to rural Moradabad. We are trying to understand why it went unnoticed all the way, as the sighting happened only after it killed while returning to Jim Corbett [National Park]. We have been following it since then. Our understanding is that the animal has panicked and attacked humans,” he said.

That is the one! NatGeo or Discovery did a documentary on her in 2015 or 2014. With everyone trying like Keystone cops to catch her.

They never did catch or kill her as reported in the documentary. I could never find out anything else.

The documentary played the cell phone video of the villagers chasing the trigress into a field of tall grass after one of the kills. One of the villagers were mailed but not killed during this engagement.
Thank you.

Do we agree these two tigerss are the same?

The pro animal worshipers, anti hunters ect are totally nuts.

Indian elephant on hunt for tigress kills woman

AFP/Anuwar Hazarika
04 Oct 2018 08:00PM



MUMBAI: An elephant that was part of a group hunting a man-eating tigress in western India ran astray overnight and trampled a woman to death, an official said Thursday (Oct 4).

The pachyderm was one of five elephants engaged in a search operation for a tigress that is suspected to have killed up to 13 people in Maharashtra state.


"The elephant left the base camp and travelled a distance of 20 kilometres in the night and killed a woman," forestry official AK Mishra said.

The elephant was later captured and all five animals were relieved of their duties, Mishra added.

The Indian Express newspaper said the victim was 35 years old.

The hunt for the tigress, who is being called Avni, which means earth in the local language, began after she was reported to have killed five villagers in the past year, Mishra said.



Officials suspect she may also have been responsible for another eight deaths stretching back to 2016, he added.

"Operations to hunt down the tiger and capture her cubs are on as per the Supreme Court directives," Mishra said.

The elephants were originally used by armed forest rangers who sat atop the animals as they entered thick forests inaccessible by vehicles.

Last month India's highest court dismissed appeals by activists that it intervene to stop the rangers from shooting dead Avni.

More than 9,000 people have signed a petition on Change.org calling for the tigress to be captured alive rather than killed.

Tigers do not generally attack humans, but some experts believe they can get a taste for human flesh once they have attacked once.

India is home to more than half of the world's tiger population with some 2,226 of the animals roaming its reserves, according to the last count in 2014.

Dozens die every year, sometimes at the hands of poachers, while reports of man-animal conflict are not uncommon. Wildlife activists say they occur when humans encroach into tiger corridors.

In October 2016 armed forest guards shot dead a man-eating tiger in northern India.

It was blamed for killing three villagers, including a woman outside Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand state.

Villagers celebrated by parading with the dead animal's carcass for nearly three hours.

Source: AFP/na


Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.co...kills-woman-10792390

Tigers in India are doomed as human population has been exploding and most prey for tigers is gone
Can’t blame the tiger, so I take side of those wildlife defenders

Ask yourself, what would Jim Corbett do. I believe Mr Corbett would be campaigning against the shoot to kill permission.

Not entirely correct.

Yes population has grown and a lot of the forest is threatened.

But the main national parks and sanctuaries are thriving. More tiger reserves today with regular tiger sightings than ever before. Plenty of prey species. You will see hundreds of chital, wild boar, plenty of sambar, gaur and other animals in most parks.

Hunting is banned. Poaching is very rare. Yes there is always a demand for tiger parts in the international black market and every few years they bust some people.

I have been visiting national parks in India since 1963 and at one time I used to make 3 or 4 visits a year. The last 20+ years have been less frequent as I now live in NZ.

However the number of tigers and frequency of sightings today are by far the best in 50+ years.

In some of the parks it seems that the tigers have lost all fear of vehicles and people.

Recently a friend visited Tadoba and saw 4 or 5 different tigers every day for 5 days. I think they had 7 sightings in one day.

Other rare species like Snow leopard are now being seen more often in the high Himalayas. There are even some operators doing spotting trips & quite successful.

The common leopard is now seen much more frequently and often adjoining major cities like Mumbai, Bangalore etc.

quote:

Originally posted by boarkiller:
Tigers in India are doomed as human population has been exploding and most prey for tigers is gone
Can’t blame the tiger, so I take side of those wildlife defenders

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/1...ndia-tiger-dead.html


The tiger has been killed.

There may be a sad and controversial story behind this.

I hear from sources in India that a significant part of the forest area has been assigned by the government to India's largest business family for commercial activity. So there was a lot of lobbying to get rid of the tiger immediately.

Not sure what the full truth is.