A rare image of a photo-trapped complete Tiger family in Kaziranga National Park, India.

Rare Photo of Tiger Family

The Family consists of two cubs, father and mother. On the left is the Tigress and facing the trap camera is the Tiger, other two are the cubs.

In a recent reports release by Aaranyak, a premier biodiversity conservation organization of Assam, India states that Kaziranga has the highest density tiger habitats in the country and has a healthy breeding source population. According to the survey spanning over three years based on camera-trapped technique, the National Park  has over 118 tigers, includes six tigers which died during the monitoring period.

The conflicts between human and big cats in India have been discussed and highlighted many times here. Despite many programs and money purred into this matter, the conflicts are getting in fact deeper with the ‘National Big Cat’ and the king of the jungle entering the scene. Yes, now its tiger that is directly confronting the human settlements in India creating panic in both wildlife lovers and common public.

The tigress that fell victim to AK-47 bulllets

During the last week of November, an adult tigress strayed out of the Kaziranga National Park of North-East India which is home to around 90 tigers.  The tigress created panic among the habitats living near by Kohora range of the National Park. The tigress not killed cattle of the villagers creating fear among all.

On 5th December, the tigress killed a pig of one villager and started eating in near by bush. It was witnessed by the villagers and informed the forest authority. The authority kept the tigress under notice and prepared to tranquilize the full grown tigress. While the villagers informed the police and also tried the flee it with crackers. The noise made the tigress nervous and cross the highway towards the other side of the jungle. In the mean time a team of Assam police also arrived at the location. The crowd created panic in the tigress too, and it started roaring. After sometime the tigress again came out and this time attacked one journalist and also one police personal armed with AK-47. He fired at the tigress on self defense. Injured with bullets, the tigress became weak and took a back step. But then another police personal fired at the tigress with his AK-47 and rained it with bullets. The tigress had no choice this time but to surrender to death.

Another sad incident! The death of the Royal bengal Tigress brought back peace into the locality among the panicking villagers. But the story shouldn’t have ended with 14 bullets inside a beautiful animal, in fact the National animal of India. The animal could have been saved with proper planning and with a little more effort. The bullets of an AK-47 should not be a solution or answer to the panic among the villagers.

This clearly proves how inadequate are the process in place to stop the human-animal conflict in the region. Its a now a grave matter, because after so much hype and money flown into the tiger projects, there are not sufficient actions are in place.

Hope as the “King of the Jungle” is involved now, the conflicts will get more attention. Unfortunately the poor villagers around the forests have suffered so much loss and more than that so many beautiful and precious animals have already lost their lives due to the negligence of a few authorities.

A real bad news for the wildlife fans. T5, popularly known as Kachida Female will no more be roaming in the wilderness of Ranthambore National Park, India. The injured Tigress was found dead yesterday by forest department. To add more grief to it, her death has orphaned just two three months old cubs.

Kachida Tigress’ two cubs were among the eight cubs located in last few months in the Ranthambore National park, which brought an air of joy to the park. But this beautiful tigress’ death has calmed down all the enthusiasm in the park.
State Tourism minister, Bina Kak, first disocvered a wound in the tigress while taking photgraphs. This act of the minister made all the wildlife conservationists happy. The tigress was tranquilised and hundreds of maggots infesting her wound were cleared. It was believed that this treatment would cure the Tigress. But the hope  didn’t come true.

The carcass of the tigress, aged around seven, was found in the Kachida area on Wednesday morning, though the death seemingly took place some 18 hours earlier.

“I am feeling very sad. They never told me about it being unwell or anything like that. I had told the officials to keep a round-the-clock watch on the tigress and its cubs. But now it appears that they kept misleading me about sighting it even when they had no trace of it,” said a visibly shocked Ms. Kak, who had extended her stay in Sawai Madhopur to oversee the treatment of the animal.

The death can be termed as Natural Death, but was proper care taken to the Tigress? Was it too late when the wound was discovered? That is the question from everyone, it should have been discovered by the authorities much before the minister who just a tourist.

The next important task lying in front of the authorities is to find the cubs and give proper care. We hope authorities will fail to find them soon, as they in danger due big males in the area.

We have collected some photos of the Tigress on her demise, in her memory.

Tigress T5 - Kachida Female Relaxing - courtesy nishith ajitsaria @ Flickr

Kachida Tigress in the Bush - Phot Courtesy Rahul.Mehrotra

The Tigress Resting - Photo Courtesy Sarvesh Kumar Sharma @indianaturewatch.net

In the Wildneness of Ranthambore - Photo Courtesy Nishith ajitsaria @ Flickr

Kachida Tigress - Photo Courtesy thehindu.com

The Treatment that never helped - Photo Courtesy @ndtv.com

Ranthambore National Park of India has a great 2011 start with the news of 9 tiger cub births.

Ranthambore, which is one of the largest National Park of India, is widely known for its Tigers. The Sanctuary was one of the initial reserved area to come under Indian Governments ‘Project Tiger’ in 1973. In 80s the park saw increase of tiger population slowly reaching 44 in 1989. But this critically endangered species saw a decline of population in 90s and later. The main reason for the population decline is attributed to poaching and habitat loss. In 2005 the official survey reveals only 24 tiger in the park. With tremendous efforts from wildlife activists and forest department, the population again soared to around 34 in 2008. According to the census conducted in the core division in 2009, revealed there were 14 males, 16 females and 10 cubs.

Tigress with Cubs at Ranthambore

But 2010 brought no good news for Tigers in Ranthambore with around 10 tiger lives lost. Due to tiger population growth and habitat shrinking, there were fierce competition among the tigers for food and territory. Apart from deaths due to fights, a few of them found staryed away from the National park. Adding worse to the scenario, in March 2010, two tiger cubs were poisoned by local villagers!

Though 2010 was not a very good year, 2011 brings really joy to the Ranthambore National park with news of nearly 9 or more new born cubs.

A trap camera caught three cubs recently in the Indala region of the park. Though the news of the birth of the cubs at the Indala region came sometime back, forest officials could not confirm it as pictures were not available. According to Rajpal Singh, member of the state wildlife board, the Indala tigress was the same one that gave birth to three cubs in 2006. Unfortunately, none of those survived.

Since last September, five cubs have been caught on camera while forest guards spotted two more tigress which are said to be lactating, park sources said.

However, sources said that there are four more cubs have been spotted in separate areas in the park. These four cubs are in two separate areas of the park. But there is no official confirmation on them as of now.

We hope this time the cubs will grow up with good health and authorities will take proper measure for this increasing population.