Tiger on the prowl

An adult Royal Bengal tiger that had strayed out of the Laokhowa-Burha Chapori Wildlife Sanctuary and has been causing panic in Dhing, a small rural township in central Assam, for the past several days, has caught the attention of the media the world over. The residents of Dhing and the villages adjoining it have been spending sleepless nights apart from remaining indoors for fear of being pounced upon by the king of the jungles. The tiger is believed to have strayed out of its natural habitat for two reasons. One is that its habitat has been rapidly shrinking because of large-scale encroachment by people of doubtful origin. And two, the floods caused by the Brahmaputra have inundated the tiger’s shrinking natural habitat. Out in a human-inhabited area, the poor tiger itself has felt threatened because it can be shot down, if not by a real bullet, then at least by a tranquillizer shot. Though the latter would probably ensure its safe transfer to the zoo or back to its natural habitat, there is also every possibility of human beings doing it to death if they are able to trap it before the forest and conservation teams can do their job of saving it unharmed. Among the most admired species in the animal kingdom, the tiger is a globally endangered species. It is listed as ‘Endangered’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, as its range is thought to have declined by 53 percent to 68 percent since the late 1990s. Major threats to tigers are habitat destruction and fragmentation due to deforestation, poaching for fur, and the illegal trade of body parts for medicinal purposes. In India, however, the tiger population has seen an unprecedented surge in the past two decades, and the country is today home to about 75 percent of the world’s tiger population. Assam, too, has not lagged behind in tiger conservation despite the rapid shrinkage of forest cover. The state had 70 tigers in 2006. The figure rose to 143 in 2010, then to 167 in 2014, and 227 in 2022.