The Fund for the Tiger Newsletter Number 3

It's been four years since the creation of The Fund For The Tiger and I am pleased and gratified by the work we have supported in Asia. As this is the third annual Newsletter, I would like to summarize a few of the salient points from the first two letters for those of you who are new friends and supporters.

The Fund For The Tiger was incorporated in the State of California as a non-profit organization on August 25, 1995. The Internal Revenue Service granted tax exempt public charity status on March 5, 1996 and the California State Franchise Tax Board followed with a tax exempt ruling on May 10, 1996.

The existence of the tiger in the wild continues to be threatened by loss of habitat, economic development, population encroachment, lack of prey species, and the absence of the political will to save the tiger in some host countries. The most immediate threat, however, continues to be poaching to satisfy the market for traditional Chinese medicinal products. It is in support of efforts to stop this that The Fund For The Tiger is dedicated.

Centuries of beliefs and customs empowered by myth die hard, but it is our belief that if the tiger is left in peace, with a reasonable amount of protected habitat, it will indeed survive as the most powerful and vibrant animal to ever grace the forests and jungles of Asia.

Though our base of support continues to grow, we are committed to the goal of remaining small, unencumbered by bureaucracy, and focused on supporting effective work being done in India and Nepal to save panther tigris tigris- known as the Royal Bengal tiger. Our funds are sent to charitable organizations and their use monitored by internationally known and respected tiger conservationists. In India we support the work of the Wildlife Protection Society of India [WPSI] headed by Belinda Wright and Ashok Kumar and in Nepal our funds are dispersed and monitored in the field by the International Trust for Nature Conservation [ITNC] and its Trustee, Dr. Charles McDougal.

Grants to the Wildlife Protection Society of India in 1999 are being used to continue and expand their tiger poaching and trade investigation project, provide resources for anti-poaching work in and around Corbett Tiger Reserve, and to provide funds for legal support in tiger related cases at Ranthambhore National Park.

In December of 1998 we received a request to assist in the establishment of an anti-poaching patrol at Sonanadi Sanctuary, an area recently added to Corbett Tiger Reserve. Sonanadi has excellent tiger numbers, prey base, wild elephants, and thought by Indian conservationists to be an important forest corridor between Corbett and Rajaji National Park to the West. The request was to buy an elephant and came from respected tiger conservationists Brijendra Singh, Corbett Director R.C. Gautam, and Ashok Kumar of the WPSI. Barbara Horton of Pasadena, California, had made a donation towards this project and we unanimously agreed to send the funds necessary to complete the arrangements.

By February, 1999, an elephant for Sonanadi became a reality and Sonanadi Sanctuary had its first forest protection patrol. The elephant, a 35 year old female who used to work at weddings in Delhi, was found by Brij Singh working at a tourist lodge adjacent to Corbett. Corbett Director Gautam named her Sona Kali, meaning 'golden flower bud' to identify her with her new home.

In March, I traveled with Ashok Kumar to Huldo Parao, the Forest Rest House where Sona Kali and the anti-poaching patrol is based. Sona Kali is a beautiful and gentle giant and her presence has created excitement and gratitude from local forest officials. The Divisional Forest Officer, Mr. Samir Sinha, came to visit and explained how the presence of an elephant multiplies the effectiveness of any anti-poaching patrol. Elephants can travel the trails and roads which become inaccessible during the rainy season to normal modes of transport and the monsoon is usually the worst time of the year for poaching. Our gift to Sonanadi complements our donation to Corbett of a motor boat in the Summer of 1998, a boat which patrols the Ramganga River and other waterways of the Corbett Tiger Reserve, one mountain range East of Sonanadi Sanctuary. The Rest House and anti-poaching compound sits high above a beautiful river. On my first foray into the forest atop Sona Kali, fresh tiger pug marks were seen and a herd of wild elephants were viewed warily from afar. It's a beautiful place, worthy of keeping pristine and protected.

I was also able to visit Bandhavgarh National Park in central India. There is good and bad news. Sita, the most famed and photographed tigress in India, has not been seen in a year. She was about 15 years old, the mother of 6 litters, five of which had surviving cubs, and it's not known if she was poached or if she wandered off to die of old age. In a short 3-day visit I watched four different young tigers, one female from Sita's last litter, and three male cubs from her daughter Bachhi, as well as grumpy old Charger, sleeping in a cave. The tigers at Bandhavgarh, at least in the core area, are flourishing. There are perhaps a dozen tigers at Bandhavgarh at the dispersal age or 24-36 months and they desperately need protection and more space. There is one village relocation effort underway in a buffer area, but more work needs to be done to protect these animals.

The WPSI's "Investigative Project into the Poaching and Illegal Trade of Wild Tigers" is an aggressive and ongoing project. They are involved in information gathering, assisting authorities in sting operations and arrests, and the important follow-up in the Indian legal system of most wildlife crimes and tiger deaths in India. They are clearly working at 'ground zero' in the war against the poachers and traders. Their June 1999 document reads as a tragic chronicle of war against the tiger:

Their list goes on and on...but we are pleased to be part of this ambitious project which is funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Barbara Delano Foundation, the British Government, and The Fund For The Tiger .

Nepal is a very poor country. The temptation for rampant economic development at the expense of the environment is great and a great deal of the normal business of running a country has been sacrificed in the revolving door of political instability that has racked Nepal for the past 9 years. That there are more than 200 tigers alive in the forests and jungles of Nepal is a testament to the dedicated conservation officials who have labored against tremendous odds to create, sustain, and protect several pristine tiger habitats. We at The Fund For The Tiger have been pleased to help.

Perhaps our most significant contribution over the past four years has been to assist in the funding of the surveys of tiger habitats throughout Nepal. These surveys are carried out under the auspices of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) in collaboration with the International Trust for Nature Conservation (ITNC) and the researchers and tiger trackers under the supervision of Dr. Charles McDougal. They provide important information on the health of tiger populations, their all-important prey species, and the forests they live in. Currently Bhim Gurung and Mahendra Shrestha are completing a study and proposal to institutionalize tiger and prey monitoring, both inside protected areas and in adjoining areas which contain tigers. McDougal met with Nepalese government officials in June of this year and the plan would be to survey a different area each year, ranging from Royal Sukla Phanta on the far Western border of Nepal to Parsa Wildlife Reserve east of Royal Chitwan National Park. The Fund For The Tiger would consider supporting this program when it gets formalized.

We have also been funding two anti-poaching patrols in Nepal for the past year: one at Parsa Wildlife Reserve and one at Royal Sukla Phanta National Park. McDougal and I met with the Director General of the DNPWC, Dr. Tirtha Man Maskey, and the Warden at Sukla Phanta, Ram Prit, at Dr. Maskey's office in Kathmandu in April of this year. Since the establishment of the anti-poaching units [there are two at Sukla Phanta: one funded by us and one funded by the WWF] there have been no known poaching incidents and the tiger population has remained stable at 16 breeding adults and a total of 31-32 tigers. The APU we support is based in Champapur and patrols north to Hirapur in a vital forest corridor. It consists of one senior game scout, four game scouts, one park ranger, and their patrols are carried out on foot, elephants, and motor scooters.

In April, I traveled to Royal Chitwan National Park with Chuck McDougal and had an unusual experience. It's a sad story of what goes wrong when tigers come into contact with humans due to loss of habitat, prey, and even water. This is the story of Sheela Kumari Pant

The tiger came north into Nepal across the dry barren hills, emaciated from hunger and thirst, and entered Shilobas Village on the southern edge of the Madi Valley on the night of April 1st. The Madi Valley is a small area south of Royal Chitwan National Park in what is known as a 'buffer zone.' It contains several small villages dependent on subsistence agriculture and was carved out between the lush forests of Chitwan and the Indian border to the south.

Pug marks showed that sometime late in the night of April 1 the tiger circled a small hut in search of food. Buffalo meat was inside but the door was secure and the tiger could not get at the meat. Pug marks were found approaching the hut, completely surrounding it, and deep scratch marks were evident on the mud walls of the building. Frustrated and hungry, the tiger headed south back into the hills and attacked the first sign of life.

At approximately 3:30 AM on April 2nd, 69 year old Sheela Kumari Pant was sleeping next to her husband on a cot on the porch of her home when the tiger pulled her off her bed, dragged her 20 ft. around the corner of the house, and ate most of her head and upper torso.

Thirty-nine hours later, at 6:30 PM on the evening of April 3rd, still in the full light of day, her widowed husband, Gyan Bahadur Pant and a friend, Dhan Bahadur Romawat, were sitting on the same cot on the same porch. To their utter amazement, the tiger walked right past them, into the adjoining hut, and attacked a sleeping helper named Devi Adhikari. One can only guess what combination of shock, rage, adrenaline, and fear drove these men into action, but they went through the one small door of the hut and chased the tiger away with sticks. It's a miracle that others were not
killed in that small house, but Devi Adhikari later died in a local hospital from the tiger's attack.

On the morning of April 4th, a bull was staked in the front yard of a home about 200 yards closer to the foothills across a dry riverbed. The tiger attacked the bull but was repelled by the bigger and stronger animal but the bull died later in the day from a deep wound to the neck .

Two villagers arrived at Tiger Tops Lodge during the night of April 4th to tell this tale and ask for help. On the morning of April 5th I traveled to Shilobas with Chuck McDougal, Nepal's renowned tiger expert; Kristjan Edwards, manager of Tiger Tops; and Sukram Kumal, perhaps the best tiger tracker in the world today.

Upon leaving Shilobas in the afternoon of April 5, all the villagers were excited with the arrival of four huge elephants and two trucks filled with forest officials, guns, and a wooden cage. That night the tiger returned to finish eating the bull, was darted with a tranquilizer gun, and now resides in precarious health at the Kathmandu Zoo.

A month before, another incident occurred at Kantipur village just 6 kilometers east of Shilobas. A tiger killed two people and was summarily poisoned and buried on the spot. It's difficult to generate local support for tiger conservation when something like this happens. Walking into a village and pulling someone out of their home is not typical tiger behavior. To return to the scene of the crime and walk into another house the very next evening not only tempts fate but speaks of normal tiger behavior gone awry.

McDougal and the Warden of Royal Chitwan National Park both agreed that these tigers must have come north from Valmiki Tiger Reserve in India. Driven by lack of food and water they came through a degraded habitat into an area with no sustainable forest cover or prey base for tigers and where no tigers had been known to live. They came across land which once did sustain lush forests and prey species for tigers.

Japan

Japan continues to mock international concern about the fate of endangered species in general and the tiger in particular. Though it joined CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) in 1980, Japan remains the only major consumer country in the world where the sale of tiger parts is still legal. Tiger bones, tiger penises, and other parts are readily available for purchase in every city in Japan.

Cambodia and Southeast Asia

The word from Cambodia is mixed. The good news is that recent studies have shown that tiger populations in Cambodia are recovering after years of warfare and military activity in their habitat. At the same time, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, January 30, 1999, warns that tigers are still prey to the legacy of the killing fields. The article states... "villagers and soldiers in the remote forests of northeastern Cambodia are resorting to the use of land mines to catch and kill tigers for the lucrative trade in animal tonics"...and that..."businessmen who buy the dead animals for their body parts are supplying the locals with gunpowder for the mines."

The respected Hong Kong daily, the South China Morning Post, writes on May 12, 1999, "tigers are highly endangered and legally protected in Laos and Burma, but the insatiable demand for tiger parts and the money that can be earned often prove irresistible. The World Conservation Union recently warned that if the trade continues at its present rate, the wild tiger population in Indochina will vanish within three years." The Indo Chinese tiger, known as panthera tigris corbetti, is found east of the Irrawaddy River in Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and parts of southern China.

In June of 1999, People magazine did a story on the eminent wildlife biologist George Schaller, and his fight to save the endangered Tibetan antelope known as the chiru. They are being slaughtered for their wool (shahtoosh) to make expensive and fashionable shawls. Schaller and the Wildlife Conservation Society of New York helped produce the excellent booklet by Belinda Wright and Ashok Kumar of the Wildlife Protection Society of India called "Fashioned for Extinction." This book documents the trade link between shahtoosh wool and tiger bones at various places along the Tibetan border with Nepal and India. This is part of the WPSI's project, investigating the poaching and trade of wild tigers, which we have been pleased to help support since 1996.

Our Website

The Fund For The Tiger now has a website. To those of you who offered this assistance to me in past years, I thank you again. Had Dr. John Mordes merely asked me if I was interested in one, I most certainly would have put on my dinosaur suit and declined. He just set it up and when I had the courage to work my way to it through the computer I realized that neither I nor The Fund For The Tiger would disintegrate into a million megabytes, or, god forbid, disappear into cyberspace. Thanks to John for the work and continued maintenance on this. So here we are at: www.channel1.com/users/hemlock/tigerfund. Dr. John extends his thanks to The Friends of Hemlock Gorge, a small Massachusetts conservation group whose own web resources have helped us get started.

Though it is clear that without financial contributions we could not support the work being done in Asia to help the tiger, other means of support and encouragement deserve our thanks.

The email address of The Fund For The Tiger means 'long live the tiger' in the Nepali language.

The sound of a vehicle brought me out of my reverie. We had come to a junction where we would drive back to the Lodge for the much anticipated cold beer. We literally slithered, lumbered, and fell off the elephants to get into the waiting jeep. If there is a graceful way to get on and off an elephant, I haven't mastered it. Chuck McDougal was driving. Chuck is a long time friend who has lived in Nepal for over 30 years and is world renowned as THE tiger expert in Nepal.

On the road back to the Lodge we slowed to cross a small stream just before entering a massive sal forest. The setting sun was now a massive ball of flames balancing on top of the distant trees. The intensity of the heat had been mercifully tempered by shade and an occasional breeze. A langur monkey was perched above us cradling a small baby in her arms. A spotted deer drank from the stream. We passed a small ox box lake where the day before I had seen a log moving in the water which turned into the face of a tiger cub swimming to reach the far side before scampering over a log into the jungle to join her family. A massive one-horned rhinoceros stood near that same log and was loudly chomping grass. Its prehistoric appearance almost looked beautiful glistening in the late afternoon sun. Far off on the edge of the forest the Indian Cuckoo was singing its melodious yet maddeningly repetitious refrain. All was becoming very still. The jungle was preparing for the night.

As we approached the park boundary at a place known as Bhimle checkpost a large shadow moved out of the grass and crossed the dirt road several hundred yards in front of us. Could it be a tiger? we all thought - too small to be a rhino and too poised and majestic a motion to be anything else. We drove slowly to where the animal had crossed the road, slowed to a crawl, and stopped. To my disbelief and wonderment there was a tiger, sitting at the edge of the road, watching us from the tall grass.

I gazed upon this face of incredible beauty- not more than 30 feet away- and looked up to the North. The Annapurna Himalaya- not 50 miles away but more than 26,000 ft. above us- was turning alternate shades of pink and grey in the fading light. My reverie was broken by a whisper from the back seat "Is there any chance this tiger will charge?" asked Robert. "There is always that chance," I replied. Georgia shifted slightly in the front seat to get a better view and that broke the delicate balance.

Out of the grass came the tigress! In one powerful motion, with incredible speed, grace, and a total absence of malice, she cut the distance between us in half then turned off into the tall grass. Before I could even begin to mouth the words "Oh, _ _ _ _!" she was gone. We looked at each other and it took a moment for eyes to pop back into their sockets and mouths to close into one big smile.

I don't know what the tiger sees, looking up at vertical two legged creatures sitting in green steel boxes on wheels or atop elephants often with little black probes seemingly attached to their faces. Perhaps she decided in mid-air that we weren't dinner. It was night. The time of the tiger. Time to begin the dance of survival between predator and prey.

To those who are indifferent about the fate of the tiger, to those who think extinction is inevitable, I invite them to sit with me at the foot of the Himalayas and watch this magnificent animal move through the forest.

If you wish to help, please send your contribution to The Fund For The Tiger at P.O. Box 2, Woodacre, California, 94973. The Fund For The Tiger is a tax exempt non profit public charity registered in the State of California.

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