The Fund for the Tiger
Newsletter Number 6
Summer, 2002
Dear Friends:
The Fund For The
Tiger has now been in existence for seven years and it is a pleasure to send
this annual Newsletter about the work we are supporting in Asia to protect the
endangered tiger and it’s habitat. In India we support the work of the
Wildlife Protection Society of India [WPSI] headed by Belinda Wright. 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.
The
most exciting project we are currently funding in India is the Bandhavgarh Project and I am pleased to be able to
support a project to help protect Bandhavgarh’s
wonderful tigers and to pursue and harass those that seek to kill them.
In
January of 2001 the WPSI and the Forest Department of Madhya Pradesh held a
Wildlife Enforcement Workshop at Bandhavgarh National
Park. We assisted in the funding of this Workshop. Forty forest guards as well
as local wildlife and enforcement officials attended from neighboring towns.
Topics discussed were: anti-poaching sting operations, information gathering
techniques, and appropriate procedures for successful arrest and convictions of
wildlife criminals.
With
our funding, the WPSI hired a field representative in June of 2001 to operate
in and around the Bandhavgarh area. His job is to
increase the awareness of the importance of tiger conservation in villages
surrounding Bandhavgarh. This is a tough but critical
job as the surrounding villages are quite poor and lack the basic amenities of
public health and education. He will also work with local officials to gather
tiger poaching information and keep close tabs on several important wildlife
cases currently on the court docket in the neighboring city of Katni. In March of 2002 I met with this gentleman and Nitin Desai, the WPSI coordinator for Central India. I was
impressed with his enthusiasm and dedication. He showed me a map of the greater
Bandhavgarh area documenting his systematic canvassing
of all 77 villages in and around Bandhavgarh Tiger
Reserve.
Katni is the nearest large city and railhead
to Bandhavgarh and it’s importance in the
illicit wildlife trade is becoming clear. A gang of 11 poachers from Katni, operating in and around tiger reserves in Andhra
Pradesh, was arrested in early May of 2002. On June 10th a gang of
43 poachers were arrested in Nagarhole National Park.
They had hired a bus from Katni to go on their
poaching spree! The WPSI is organizing a Wildlife Crime Workshop this September
in Katni and we have wired the funds to pay for it.
Participants will be the local police, the judiciary, and the media, and the
emphasis will be on tiger conservation and laws relevant to the broader issues
of wildlife conservation.
Belinda
Wright wrote to us saying… “this Katni
angle is turning out to me much more critical than I thought and our watchdog
is truly invaluable. We are deeply indebted to you for first pushing us to make
this happen.”
In March I spoke by phone with the
Honorary Warden at Corbett Tiger Reserve,
Brijendra Singh, and have been in contact with him
via email since. He confirms that Corbett is quiet at the moment but his
patrolling and information gathering continues to monitor any and all threats
to Corbett with help from the WPSI and our Fund. He also monitors the use and
health of Sonakali,
the elephant we helped donate to Sonanadi Sanctuary.
Food and supplies for her and her mahout as well as a proper shed and a
protective enclosure come from our funding. Sonakali’s
importance to this pristine forest is most apparent during the summer months
when the monsoon rains make foot and vehicular patrols impossible. Sonakali not only continues anti-poaching patrols but also
helps transport supplies to forest guard camps within the forest. The tiger
population at Sonanadi Sanctuary, though not
flourishing, remains healthy and stable.
You may have read about the current political instability in Nepal where a so-called ‘Maoist insurgency’ is fighting for a change in the political system. This has had both good and bad effects on the wildlife in the national parks. First the good news. With the government declaring an ‘emergency’ the Army now has authority to operate anywhere, whereas in the past they were stationed inside the national parks and did very little active patrolling. They have recently been helpful in several operations aimed at wildlife poachers in the Chitwan area. The bad news is that they have consolidated their forces in certain areas and left others totally vulnerable to poaching. No animal has suffered more than the rhino, which is an easy target as it grazes in the open fields near access roads. The rhino also is very valuable. One horn can be sold in Kathmandu for as much as $10,000. When I met with Chuck McDougal and Tikaram Adhikari in Chitwan this past March I learned that 30 rhinos were known to have been killed in the past year and 18 of those between January and March of 2002. And these are only the official recorded cases. Tikaram’s information network was helpful in arresting 31 poachers since last summer. A report came to me in June saying that another 10 ‘serious poachers’ had been arrested between mid-March and mid-April as a result of Tikaram’s work and were languishing in the Bharatpur jail. I offered to pay for any legitimate rewards due for these results and some of our funds were released for this in June.
For
the past two years we have been funding a mobile anti-poaching
intelligence-gathering network run by Tikaram Adhikari at Chitwan National
Park. Tikaram is a former Deputy Warden at Chitwan and Warden of Shey Phoksumdo National Park and was recently named Chief Warden
at Parsa Wildlife Reserve, which adjoins Chitwan to the East. He runs an intricate network of
informants and co-ordinates his operations with the existing anti-poaching
units with back up from armed Forest Guards and now the Royal Army. When this
latest rhino crisis erupted he was brought back to Chitwan
on temporary assignment with impressive results. I was pleased when Tikaram told me… “your funding has been very
useful. Whatever poachers have been caught (since 1994) it was with information
that came from ITNC informants paid by your Fund.”
Bhim Gurung, formerly of Tiger Tops and
now with the University of Minnesota, has established an ambitious network of
30 informants ranging from Sukla Phanta
in the Far West to Kosi Thappu
in the East. These ‘citizen
rangers’ as he calls them, live in the critical areas between the
tiger’s protected habitat and provide information about the presence or
absence of the tiger, its prey species, and general health of the habitat. We
continue to assist in the funding of this project.
Tiger monitoring and surveys are now done
by camera trapping, wherein the tiger takes its own picture by walking through
a laser beam from cameras placed at strategic locations throughout tiger
habitat. A GPS device is also used to record the exact location of each camera.
Responsibility for surveying tigers throughout Nepal has been divided between
the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation with
funding from the World Wildlife Fund and the International Trust for Nature
Conservation with assistance from The Fund For The Tiger. Adam Barlow is now
overseeing this project with McDougal and help from two Nepalese tiger
monitors, Baba Ram and Indra. This summer we
purchased two new camera set-ups and a Garmin GPS for
use in the coming fall.
Though
there have been a few cases of tiger deaths reported in the Chitwan
area, their population remains fairly stable and has escaped the fate of the
rhino. A few have even shown up in the camera-monitoring project that were
thought to have disappeared.
Funds
have been released this year to continue to support the anti-poaching patrol at
Royal Sukla Phanta Wildlife Reserve at Hirapur/Champapur
in the far southwestern corner of Nepal. With our funds this post was first
established in 1998 and continues to be viable. Chuck McDougal and
representatives of the ITNC met with officials at the DNPWC in May of this
year. They were told that the APU we support consists of 5 rangers and game
scouts and one informant. It operates in an important corridor extending north
from Sukla Phanta. There
has been no recorded poaching of tigers.
The Summer 2000 Newsletter began
with news coming out of India about massive seizures of wildlife products. In
December of 1999, 3 tiger skins and 50 leopard skins were seized from a truck
on the outskirts of Delhi. In January of 2000, the Forest Department in the
town of Khaga near Allahabad discovered a shipment of
4 tiger skins, 175 kg. of tiger and other bones, 132 tiger claws (18 dead
tigers), 70 leopard skins, 18,000 leopard claws (1000 leopards- I am NOT
kidding), 220 blackbuck and otter skins. On July 31 of this year, the Press
Trust of India reported that the Central Bureau of Investigation had arrested
three men in connection with these seizures. The identity of the ringleaders of
these operations are known and living in Kathmandu.
In 1997 the Wildlife Protection
Society of India published a book called Fashioned
for Extinction, which documented
the slaughter of the chiru, or Tibetan antelope, for
making the worlds finest and most expensive wool shawl- known as shahtoosh. Their
book also documented the bartering of tiger bones for shahtoosh
on the Nepal-Tibet border. On August 24, the Wildlife Trust of India reported
that the manufacture of shahtoosh shawls has finally
been banned in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the only place in the world
where they have been woven for centuries. This helps give a new lease on life
to the chiru and takes away a bartering block on the
tiger’s smuggling route to extinction.
Many of you have been to Bandhavgarh. The
tigers are absolutely flourishing in the core area. Bachhi,
of Charger and Sita lineage, is now 8 years old and
continues to produce tigers and has a new litter of three cubs now 6-8 months
old. She is the mother of the 3 males (now 5 years old), which dominate the
park and, with few exceptions, continue to respect each other’s
territory. There are a total of 5 adult
females, 3 adult males, one 3-year-old female, eight 2 yr. old sub-adults (4
males/4 females) at the dangerous dispersal age, and at least 7 cubs ranging
from 3-8 months. In March of this year we witnessed an interesting bit of tiger
behavior. Late in the afternoon as we were driving to the park exit a large
tiger was spotted coming down through the rocks just at the end of the Chakhadara meadow. It was the tigress known as the Chakhadara Female, born of Sita’s
last litter in 1996. A hundred yards up the rocky hill two more tigers emerged,
perhaps hoping to follow their mother on a kill. They were the young
20-month-old brother and sister we had seen sharing kills two consecutive
mornings. But the Chakhadara Female would have
nothing to do with them. We had moved our jeeps into a position to watch them
coming down the steep rocks into the meadow when all of a sudden all hell broke
loose from above. Sounds of roaring and fighting and the thrashing of tigers
came down through the trees. For a moment I thought all three tigers would fall
off the rocks into our jeeps. The Chakhadara Female
was clearly chasing them off. 20 months of age is a bit young to be forced away
from the mother. Though tigers will eventually disperse and become solitary
animals, the longer they stay together the better their chances for survival.
Either the mother knew they could now hunt on their own and she was hungry or
there was another reason. This became clear in June when Kuttapan
and the other mahouts spotted the Chakhardara Female
with four newborn cubs.
Basanta Mia, aged 28, was in charge of one of the domestic
elephants at Temple Tiger Wildlife Camp, a tourist concession at Chitwan National Park. On the morning of May 19, he went
out along to cut fodder in the tall grass some 70 metres
in front of the camp. He had cut two bundles when he was attacked and killed by
a tiger. The tiger had been walking along a path through the deep grass. As it
came abreast of the man 10 metres off the trail, it
immediately charged. The victim’s companions at the camp heard him scream
twice and the tiger growl once.
The
most likely scenario, based on subsequent studies of the tigers pug marks in
relation to the position of the man, is that this was a tragic surprise
encounter, the man being bent over cutting grass indistinguishable from the
four legged ungulates which are the predominant prey species of the tiger. Be
that as it may, the tiger dragged the poor chap 300 metres
into thick grassland.
Mounted
on three elephants the camp staff followed the drag until they located the
victim’s body. The tiger refused to relinquish his kill and aggressively
kept the elephants at bay. A standoff ensued. Finally the tiger seized the body
and dragged it further into cover. The frustrated party returned to camp.
I
arrived with my trackers in the afternoon, and we found the clear impression of
the tiger’s pug marks made as it approached along a streambed. This tiger
was already known to us, a three year old son of the resident tigress to the
east of Temple Tiger Camp.
We
decided to make another attempt to recover the body. As we mounted the
elephants, the wailing of the victim’s bride of three months made a deep
impression. We followed the new drag until we discovered the corpse, from which
the tiger had just been feeding. Once again he refused to give up the kill and
continued mock charges against our elephants. An army sergeant from the nearby
guard post fired two rounds into the air to intimidate the tiger. The tiger
moved off but as soon as two of our party began to dismount from their
elephant, he came charging back in anger. Two more shots were fired but the cat
would not relinquish the kill. We finally managed to get all three elephants
shoulder to shoulder between the tiger and the victim’s body. Two of our
men slid off the elephant’s back, tied a rope around the man’s one
remaining leg, and quickly remounted. The corpse was dragged back to the nearby
elephant camp for a proper funeral. After dark the tiger approached the camp
roaring continually and causing pandemonium among the elephants. He remained in
the vicinity until the next morning.
The
park authorities decided this cat should be captured and brought to the
Kathmandu Zoo. Seven buffaloes calves were tied out as bait but in the meantime
the tiger once again showed its bold and aggressive nature. Park guards at the Bimle checkpost had rounded up
five buffaloes that had crossed the Rapti River, and
entered the park, where they had been discovered grazing illegally. One early
morning, the owners went to the post, paid the requisite fine, and took their
buffaloes back towards the river, one man in front and three behind. As they
emerged from the forest and entered the final stretch of grassland before
reaching the river, the tiger leaped from cover and killed a large buffalo in
front of their eyes.
On
the afternoon of May 29, my trackers tied a bait at the side of a road running
along the bank of an ox-bow lake. They cut grass for the buffalo and then began
to clear the ground around it so that pugmarks could be recorded. At this point
the mahout (driver) of an elephant they had brought along for security yelled
out… “there’s the tiger.” The big cat was watching the
man from the opposite side of the road, only 15 metres
away. As soon as the men beat a retreat, the tiger killed the buffalo and
dragged it into the grassland.
On
the morning of May 30 the capture operation was successful and carried out
under supervision of the park warden and personnel from King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation, Tiger Tops Jungle
Lodge, and Temple Tiger Wildlife Camp. Nine elephants were used to drive the
tiger down a funnel of metre wide cloth to where it was
darted by a man with a tranquilizer gun.
As
the tiger lay in the grass waiting to be transported to the Zoo it had yet one
more gasp of aggressive anger. I had climbed down off my elephant and was
preparing to make some routine observations of the tiger to ascertain its
general health and condition. The tiger was laying still, eyes wide open, and
breathing heavily. As I bent down to pull out my tape measure to get an
accurate measurement of its size, the tiger started to get up, then collapsed
on top of me. The Temple Tiger arrived at the Kathmandu Zoo in good condition
but still in a very angry state.
Chuck McDougal
Chitwan 1993
•Mountain
Travel/Sobek continues to donate all profits from
their annual Save The Tiger trip to The Fund For The Tiger. The trip, which
visits Bandhavgarh National Park in India and Royal Chitwan National Park in Nepal, is an excellent way for
people to travel into the heart of tiger country, see a tiger in the wild, and
make a significant contribution to tiger conservation work. I created this trip
in 1994 in my job a Trip Leader and it allows me to travel to tiger country at
no cost to our fund.
•The
Tiger Tops/Tiger Mountain Group in Nepal continues to participate generously in
the Save The Tiger trip and have, over the years, offered me the gracious
hospitality that has afforded me the opportunity to learn first-hand about the
status of the tiger in Nepal.
•Thanks
to The American Himalayan Foundation for its generous grant in December of last
year, which helps sustain our support for anti-poaching patrols and tiger
habitat protection throughout Nepal.
•A very
special thanks this year goes to 6 Flags/Marine World in Vallejo, California
and their Tiger Island people. An outdoor art exhibit called SharkByte Art was held from August through October of 2001
in San Jose, California. 100 local artists created artistic various
interpretations on life sized fiberglass sharks. Each artist had a sponsor and
each exhibit raised funds via auction for a non-profit charity chosen by the
sponsor. Artist Linda Dupuis-Rosen and her work, Noah’s Shark, was
sponsored by 6 Flags/Marine World and they selected The Fund For The Tiger to
be the recipient of the auction of Linda’s work. The auction was held
March 2, 2002 and the San Jose Downtown Association sent a check for the
proceeds from the sale of Linda’s shark.
•A great
group of young students from the 6th grade classes at Montecito
Union School in Santa Barbara deserve our thanks as well. Connie Speight made
some presentations at their school and they raised several hundred dollars,
which have been used helping the tigers take their own pictures in Nepal.
•To our Webmeister, Dr. John Mordes, my gratitude for establishing
our web site and continuing to update it from time to time. PLEASE NOTE that we have changed the
address of our website. Look for it at:
www.TheFundForTheTiger.org
JAIBAGH- the email address of The Fund For The Tiger, means
“long live the tiger” in the Nepali language.
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 non-profit tax exempt public charity registered in the State of
California. Your contribution is deductible for tax purposes within the limits
of the law.
Sincerely,
Brian K. Weirum
Chairman
The Fund For
The Tiger
The Fund For
The Tiger would like to
thank all those listed below who have made contributions in 2001 and through
August of 2002. Your support is greatly appreciated.