News from the filed 25th January 2007-February 7th 2008

This week started off well enough but ended on a sad and ridiculous note.

We were busy trying to catch a problem tiger down in Chandpai that has been killing livestock (more than 60) and one person since last April. The idea was a simple one; to collar the tiger so that a team of Forest Department staff and villagers could monitor it every day so that further accidents could be avoided. By knowing where it was all the time it would be possible to stop livestock going into that part of the jungle and if the tiger approached too close to the village then we would put in measures to scare it away. At the moment the villagers do not know when it will strike next and there are such negative feelings towards the tiger that if it strayed into the village then it will probably be killed. If more cattle are killed then it is also easy to poison the carcass with readily available pesticide. By collaring it, I think we would have greatly reduced the chances of the tiger being killed.

The same method is being used to great success in Kenya where village “Lion Guardians” monitor and protect lions that would otherwise have been killed because of their livestock raiding tendencies (www.lionconservation.org) – both number of lions and livestock killed has been greatly reduced.

However, it was no use trying to collar the tiger if the villagers themselves did not want to be part of it so we had two village meetings to exchange ideas. We put it to them that we could try to collar the tiger if they wanted us to but would not do so if we did not have their support. At each of the meetings every single villager raised their hands to say that they wanted us to collar the tiger.

So we put out two cows and the very first night the bait that Alam put out was killed. Over the next three days we put snares around the bait and each night the tiger came back but was never caught. In the past it took us over two months to catch each of the previous two tigers so a few days of misses was nothing to worry about.

Out of the blue a front page article appeared in a leading Bangla newspaper detailing a long list of untruths about the project with particular reference to the darting and collaring operation. We immediately stopped the darting efforts because all government operations are sensitive to a powerful media, so the Forest Department needed time to review the situation and answer the accusations arising in the paper. The article was followed by an editorial and a sub-editorial, all aimed at damaging the project’s reputation and that of the people involved.

It was quite surprising how full of hatred the articles were towards our efforts. If the media had less power than it does then the articles would be funny. Funny in the sense that the claims the articles made were absurd and could not have been further from the truth. If the authors wanted to get at the truth then it would have been easy to look up the facts on the internet, read some of the key literature on the subject, visit Chandpai or ask the team some questions. In the past we invited these reporters to see our activities in the field in order to raise awareness of the project, but they declined. One of the journalists involved even attended a meeting we held with the Forest Department two years ago to discuss the use of collaring as a tiger management tool. the journalist agreed and recommended the collaring program to go ahead.

Some of the main points of the articles (with answers to them) are below:

1. Collaring tigers kills the tiger and changes its behaviour.
There is no evidence to support this claim whatsoever; the collars weigh 1.1 kg (less than 2% of the animals body weight) and collaring has been carried out on tigers since the 1970’s. In Nepal alone over 30 tigers have been collared. On a personal note, if collaring were harmful then we would of course not do it.

2. Collaring tigers and other animals is outdated and is not used in other countries.
In particular the article claims that it was banned in India. In fact tigers are still being collared in Thailand, Russia and India. In Russia alone they have caught 60 individual animals in their collaring operation. In Thailand they have caught 6 animals (they just collared a large male tiger only last week). In India, there have been collaring operations in Nagarahole, Panna, Ranthambore, Khana and less than two months ago they collared their first tiger in the Indian side of the Sundarbans. As for other animals, in Kenya for example one project alone has collared 94 lions (www.lionconservation.org).

3. The drug used to immobilize them during capture severely damages their nervous system.
The drug used to collar tigers in Bangladesh has been used on tigers for many years. One study collared 25 tigers using the drug without any problem.

4. The first 2 tigers somehow died from either the tranquilization or collaring process.
Both tigers we caught were old females with broken teeth. When their teeth are broken it is hard for them to process their food so after some time their condition starts to deteriorate. One tiger died after 6 months and the other tiger was re-captured to retrieve the collar after 9 months, after which she was released back into the jungle.

5. The tiger in Chandpai got caught in a snare but escaped injured.
This is quite simply a big fat lie.

Now because of the newspaper’s articles, most of Bangladesh is wandering around with the impression that a group of evil foreigners are hell bent on killing their tigers. However, nearly all the team are paid Bangladeshis. Dave has been coming to Bangladesh since 2001 and has only been paid once for his troubles. I have been coming since 2004 and have been paid for less than half the time I have spent here. Our main goal is to help secure the long-term protection for the Sundarbans tiger.

So now as we spend time discussing the pros and cons of collaring up in Dhaka, down in Chandpai the villagers continue to suffer. On February 5th yet another cow was killed. There are many other villagers that suffer the same problem and get no help to resolve it. Perhaps the journalists that are attacking us are going to come down to the jungle to help save the Sundarbans tigers but somehow I doubt it.

Meanwhile the other project activities continue. Hasan and Alex are surging ahead with the prey survey and have completed the first phase (15 days of plot clearance). Next they will return to the field, visit the plots they made previously, and count any new deer pellet groups they find.

In the West Mizan is busy training up the tiger response team stationed in Dobeki. The team have already responded to two man-eating incidents near the border areas. One woman and one man were killed in seperate incidents. Mizan and the team patrolled the area to keep other villagers away from danger and recorded some data on each of the incidents. Although not 100% sure, Mizan thinks that the distance between incidents is small enough that both killings could have been carried out by the same tiger. Mizan also distributed a small amount of money to the victims families to help them prepare the burial and other expenses.

Adam Barlow
Dhaka