More tiger poaching in North than in South

OOTY: While reply to an RTI query by Wildlife Crime Control Bureau of India(WCCB) revealed that 384 tigers were killed by poachers across the country for the past one decade, between November 2008 and November 2018, experts in wildlife conservation felt that tiger conservation is a challenging issue and lacunae to be tackled. 

N. Mohanraj, Adviser, WWF-India, said that tiger poaching is particularly more in northern India than south India.  “The good market for tiger products in, especially for its skin, bones and claws is learnt to be the reason for poachers eying for tigers.  It is said that there is false belief in China that tiger bones, used to make soups and other related food items there, enhances libido and hence there is a good demand there. That’s the major reason why the tigers are poached” he noted and added the terrain in the North-East parts bordering China enables easy access for illegal transfer of tiger parts.

“The bigwigs in tiger poaching mafia/network are said to allure the poverty-ridden jungle dwellers or those live along the tiger reserve fringes to engage them in poaching.  It is also said that at the ground level these poachers kill the tigers and bury them in particular spots and another group from outside will come and take it out for sales,” he pointed out. 

To check poaching, what is needed community participation and social fencing in the buffer zones of tiger reserves to ensure that participatory role of the residents there in tiger conservation.  The poverty at the buffer zones should be addressed and more welfare measures should be implemented there to garner the support of public there.  This apart, efforts must be taken to dismantle the market for tiger products in neighbouring countries like China and to have special squads for detection in international borders,” Mr. Mohanraj suggested.

Meanwhile, Dr K. Ullas Karanth, director, Centre for Wildlife Studies at Bengaluru,  an expert in the tiger conservation field, said, “given a total tiger population of 3,000 to 3,500 in India, with about 1,000 breeding females producing approximately 1,000 new’ tigers over one year age, each year, deaths of about 250-500 tigers from natural causes and poaching can be expected. Even if a third of these deaths are from poaching, I would expect about 80-150 tigers to die from poaching per year.  Of course, only a small fraction of poaching cases are detected and many poaching deaths are not classified as such because, the cause cannot be determined from old carcasses.. Given all this, the report that only 40 tigers on average were poached per year is clearly an underestimate.  However, while there are many things we can do to improve the situation, the natural productivity of many tiger populations in Western Ghats, Terai and parts of MP and Maharashtra is sufficiently high to sustain these levels of losses.”  

“The problem is in vast areas of Eastern Indian and Northeast India, where poaching of the prey base has virtually emptied the forest of all tigers. That is where real attention is needed,” he explained.

“Good laws already exist to control poaching. It is the lax implementation as well as lack of local public support in tiger areas, which are the issues that we need to address,” Dr Karanth noted.