The Fund for the Tiger Newsletter Number 8 Summer, 2004

Dear Friends:

It’s been a very interesting year in the tiger conservation world as viewed from The Fund For The Tiger with some good news in with the bad. A truck carrying poachers was bombed at Sukla Phanta Wildlife Reserve in Nepal. Reports from Nepal substantiate our long held contention that Nepal lies on the smuggling route to extinction for many of South Asia’s endangered species. In the buffer zone around Chitwan National Park, no less than 18 people were killed by tigers in the first three months of 2004. Inside the park rhino losses have decreased dramatically due to aggressive anti-poaching work and, in the past nine years 103 tigers have taken over 1000 pictures of themselves.

Last October the BBC reported the largest seizure of endangered animal skins in Tibet in over 50 years. 1276 (32 tigers, 579 leopards, and 665 otters) skins valued at almost $800,000 were found in a truck enroute to Lhasa along the ancient trade route through Ali in Western Tibet. This is a monumental loss from India’s forests. The issue of poaching by electrocution has raised its ugly head. At Bandhavgarh National Park, though there have been some significant tiger losses in the past year, a precedent-setting land acquisition effort is almost complete which would give some desperately needed land back to the tigers.

INDIA:

All funding of programs in India goes in support of the following tiger conservation efforts of the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) and its founder, Belinda Wright.

Since 1996 we have been assisting the WPSI in its biggest and most aggressive project: Poaching and Trade Investigation. Every wildlife crime brought to its attention is investigated. Informants work to gather leads, which can lead to sting operations against those involved in wildlife crimes. The WPSI has been working closely with the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation the past few years on many such operations to disrupt the wildlife criminals. The WPSI reports that between December of 2003 and July 2004 at least 12 tigers and 80 leopards are known to have been lost to poachers throughout India. During that period the WPSI provided information and assistance that resulted in 11 wildlife product seizures and the arrest of 23 wildlife criminals. A July 16th email from Belinda Wright cites with alarm that in the past three weeks, 10 tiger skins, 25 leopard skins, 4 sacks of fresh tiger bones, and the claws of 31 leopards were seized in 11 raids throughout India and Nepal. The WPSI is working on leads implicating 263 known or suspected wildlife criminals who have direct links from Nagarhole in the far South to the trade routes of northern India and Nepal and on to the markets of the Far East. Much of the trade leads into and out of Katni, a major railhead in Central India. This underscores the importance of the wildlife crime workshops that we sponsored for the WPSI in both Katni and Bandhavgarh in 2001 and 2002. After meetings at the offices of the WPSI in Delhi and with their Central India and Bandhavgarh operatives, I think it’s safe to say that the WPSI is causing some serious disruption in the wildlife crime trade.

At the end of 1998, we helped donate an elephant (Sonakali) to be used in patrolling and protection of Sonanadhi Sanctuary and Corbett Tiger Reserve. We continue to fund her general support of food and equipment required to do her job as supervised by the Honorary Warden of Corbett Tiger Reserve, Brijendra Singh. I had dinner with Brij while in India and he told of the arrest of 6 suspected elephants poachers while on a patrol with Sonakali last fall. [A sad note on the passing of Barbara Horton last year. Barbara was a gracious lady and the inspiration behind our partnering with her to purchase and donate Sonakali to Corbett/Sonanadhi].

The issue of electrocution of animals has taken an alarming trend in India. The WPSI has filed an exhaustive brief with the Supreme Court of India, documenting that in 2003, 28 elephants and 6 tigers died due to electrocution. There is deliberate poaching- the stealing of electricity from an overhead line by hooking a wire and laying a live line across an animal track and accidental deaths caused by live power lines intersecting animal migration routes.

The news from Bandhavgarh National Park is very interesting this year. Between March 28, 2003 and January 20, 2004, five tigers are known to have died in and around Bandhavgarh. The first was the case of Mohini (Bachhi) who died after being hit by a vehicle on the Tala Umaria Road. Within months, one of her sub-adult male cubs died from wounds after losing a fight with a porcupine. Then in late October, word came that a tiger had been found dead from electrocution in an area of land which protrudes into the NE corner of the park. The tiger was identified as the large male known as B-1, one of the three brothers from a 1997 Mohini litter who had ruled the park for years. Our WPSI field operative did some excellent research which showed that on the night of October 29 there was a power surge and black-out near Damnar village. Seven people were arrested and claimed that their target had been deer, not tigers. On December 3, one of B-1’s younger male cubs died in a territorial fight with an older brother. On January 20, 2004, another tiger was electrocuted near Dhamokhar just NW of the park core area. Investigations proved that this was a deliberate act of poaching after a gang of nine people were arrested on January 26th. The ringleader is a known tiger poacher who escaped with the skin.

When I was at Bandhavgarh in March, I was driven to the area where B-1 was killed. It’s a 54-acre parcel of land which butts into the core area of Bandhavgarh. There are two villages, Damnar and Gongor, with 23 families. Tiger pugmarks have been seen winding in and out of the fences meant to separate the forest from the agricultural land where villagers graze their livestock. Villagers have even been known to tell the elephant drivers where to find tigers to show to tourists- a clear recipe for disaster. A precedent-setting case is underway with strong WPSI encouragement to get these two villages re-located and the land returned to the Forest Department. There is a 1982 Supreme Court decision authorizing this. There is also, however, a complicated process involving several government agencies. Once the first official ‘Intention of Acquisition’ is filed, the entire process must be completed within 2 years or the process goes back to the proverbial “square one”. Last word was that the village leaders had come to an agreement with the government though the ink is not quite dry. The tigers inside the core area are so productive, almost abundant, and there is no safe place for them to disperse once becoming adults. As there are 77 villages in and around the greater Bandhavgarh area, this land acquisition effort could be an important event for future generations of tigers.

Inside the park, the tiger continues to do well and this spring, new litters were born to the three main resident females…more tigers needing more room to roam. Two of these tigresses, Chakhadara and Banbayi, were born in the final 1996 litter of the legendary Sita and Charger and are now on their third litter.

NEPAL:

 The political insurgency that is wreaking havoc throughout Nepal continues to make life hard on those working to protect its forests and animals.  On March 16th a bomb blew up a truck carrying timber poachers at Sukla Phanta Wildlife Reserve.  The explosion took place inside the park, 10 km. from park headquarters.  Two game scouts and nine arrested timber poachers died.  Chief Warden Tikaram Adhikari was driving to meet the truck on another road and escaped harm.  On April 10th I spoke to Tikaram by phone at his home in Bharatpur.  He concedes that things are bad at Sukla Phanta due to the Maoist problem.  The target of the March 16th bomb attack was the Army, not the wildlife staff.  Tikaram said that the Maoists are not targeting the park staff and that his anti-poaching work is ongoing.  I told him that as long as he was there continuing his work I wanted to support him and he was very grateful.

Chuck McDougal and Adam Barlow are continuing to use 7 different camera trap sets to monitor the health of the tiger population at Chitwan.  In the past nine years over 1000 pictures have been taken of 103 different tigers.

 It has been clear for years that Nepal lies on the smuggling route to extinction for many endangered animals, and the center of this trade is Kathmandu.  A nepalnews.com story on July 15, 2004, confirms that Nepal is a transit point for illegal wildlife trade and that “factories that pack the wildlife items and products for export across the borders have been set up in Kathmandu.”   Nepal’s open border with India to the south and the geographical complexities of the Himalayan mountain range to the north, make control, monitoring, and policing of this illegal trade extremely difficult.  Tiger, leopard, and rhino products head north into Tibet and on to the Far East or Middle East via Kathmandu or the isolated mountain trade routes.  We continue to support work in progress to disrupt this trade.

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 tigers’ 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.  Wildlife conservation officials in Nepal have praised Bhim’s project as providing the “best data on continuity and gaps in tiger habitat throughout Nepal.”

Against all odds, the tiger seems to be doing well and anti-poaching work increasingly effective at Royal Chitwan National Park.  Rhinos continue to suffer poaching losses but things have improved.  Park Warden Shiva Raj Bhatta says there is now a better and effective co-operation between wildlife officials and the Army.  In the two previous Nepali calendar years, there were 71 known incidents of rhino poaching.  This past year which ended early April, there were only 16 (+ -).   There are 65 poachers in the Bharatpur jail, 12 others under investigation and 50 other known poachers at large.  There have been 20 arrests during the past 8 months and 12 alone in February.  We have used our funds for rewards for this effective effort and continue to fund anti-poaching patrols and information gathering as co-ordinated by the Warden. Tigers are healthy with a high rate of reproduction and a low turnover of resident females.  In the first 3 months of this year 18 people were killed by tigers.  All deaths were in the buffer zone, an area created for the benefit of local villagers which also becomes a natural habitat for dispersing tigers.  I have re-printed an article on this with Chuck McDougal’s permission. 

Conflict Escalation in Nepal

ESCALATION OF TIGER AND HUMAN CONFLICT IN THE BUFFER ZONE OF NEPAL’S ROYAL CHITWAN NATIONAL PARK

By Charles McDougal, Adam Barlow, Dinesh Thapa, Sukram Kumal, and Dhan Bahadur Tamang

Since 1998 there has been a marked increase in the number of persons killed by tigers in and around Royal Chitwan National Park (RCNP). Prior to that time the majority of victims had been killed inside the park. But since 1998 the scene of conflict has shifted to the buffer zone. With the implementation of the Buffer Zone Act of 1993 the management of the 750-km2 buffer zone forests was given over to the Village Development Communities (VDCs) adjoining the park. Due to new management strategies, in many localities the condition of this buffer zone forest improved as it also did in the newly established community forests in the same area. Whereas previously there was little holding ground for tigers outside the park, the buffer zone and community forests increasingly provided additional tiger habitat. As the prey base started to recover, transient tigers began to visit the buffer zone and remain there during the day. Eventually a few tigers became resident and even began to breed, setting the stage for conflict as the likelihood of tiger and human confrontations increased.

Between 1979 and 1998 a total of 22 persons were killed, 59% of them within the National Park and 41% outside. Between 1998 and the end of March 2004 an additional 54 persons have been killed. In contrast to the earlier period the great majority of these fatalities (78%) occurred in the Buffer Zone with far fewer (22%) in the Park.

Then in a period of just 3 months (December 22, 2003 to March 24, 2004), 18 people were killed by 4 different tigers. All these cases occurred in the buffer zone. Eleven of the victims were killed by a tigress that was accompanied by two large offspring (one male and one female). The killing was done initially by the tigress herself until she was believed to have been poisoned, together with her female cub, by local villagers.  Her surviving male cub then continued the carnage, killing five more people in a single day. He had already killed a man when he was surprised by a party of five people going on a picnic, four of whom he then killed. These 11 cases took place in the Madi Valley, lying between RCNP to the north and the Someswar Hills running along the Nepal-India border to the south.  These tigers lived in the sub-optimal forests on those hills, occasionally crossing the border into India were they are reported to have killed 3 other people (a total of 14 victims).

Another man-eater, the Bhagadi Tigress, was living with 3 her small cubs in the buffer zone forests along the east channel of the Narayani River in Meghauli and Dibyanagar VDCs. She killed 5 people between December 29, 2003 and March 3, 2004. Three of her victims met their death in the space of 20 minutes during the period when the area was opened for the villagers to cut grass. Because she did not consume the flesh of any of her victims, we believe that she attacked because she felt that they were threatening her cubs.

Finally an old male tiger with worn down canines and broken claws killed two persons in Kumrose near Sauraha in late March. Approaching some outlying dwellings at night, probably searching for livestock, the tiger carried off a four-year-old child he found sleeping outside on a veranda. The following day he killed a herdsman who was attempting to defend some livestock that the tiger was hunting.

When tigers kill people in the buffer zone outside the park, the authorities take prompt action. Teams made up of personnel from the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC), The King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation (KMTNC) and The International Trust for Nature Conservation (ITNC) were immediately dispatched to the various scenes. Difficult terrain initially hampered efforts to catch the Madi tigers and they proved elusive for a long period. Pursuit of the Bagadi Tigress was deliberately delayed because of the mitigating circumstances: the tigress had acted in defense of her cubs.  On the other hand the Kumrose Tiger was destroyed as soon as he began to attack humans. Eventually, the young Madi male, the Bhagadi female, and the Kumrose male were killed on 3 consecutive days- March 24, 25, and 26, 2004.

Tigers living in the buffer zones will inevitably come into conflict with villagers that venture into the forests to graze livestock and collect forest products. This problem is compounded by a lower prey base in the buffer zone relative to the park, perhaps making a tiger more likely to search for alternative prey, especially a tigress with dependent young. To alleviate this problem, the park authorities are considering a plan to regulate the movement of villagers and the harvest of resources in the buffer zone in order to minimize confrontations with tigers.

All funding for projects in Nepal go to the International Trust for Nature Conservation and are co-ordinated with local authorities by its Trustee, Dr. Charles McDougal.  Dinesh Thapa oversees the dispersal of funds into the field and sends excellent reports.

Gratitudes:

• 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 next departure will be March of 2006.
   

• A special thank you to John Lyddon and the Seven Springs Foundation for a very generous grant to allow us to continue funding aggressive tiger conservation work in India and Nepal.
   

• Thanks to The American Himalayan Foundation for its generous grant, which helps sustain our support for anti-poaching patrols and tiger habitat protection throughout Nepal.
   

• The Tiger Tops/Tiger Mountain Group in Nepal continues to participate in the Save The Tiger trip and have, over the years, offered me the hospitality that has afforded me the opportunity to learn first-hand about the status of the tiger 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 it to an address that even I can remember. 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

Page last updated August 19, 2004

Back to the Fund for the Tiger Home Page