Villages on the Nagpur-Chandapur highway between Nagbhid and Mul in central India are facing onslaught of man-eating tigers with about 40 people killed over the last three years. The animosity between the villagers and the animals has reached intolerable levels with about 2,120 cattle being killed by tigers and leopards in these three years.
The Chandrapur district has a population of 90 tigers. The conflict is largely restricted to the Nagbhid-Mul belt along the state highway where greater number of villages are located near the road.
The Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve here is a rare success story of tiger conservation, with tigers breeding well here. Young cubs tend to move to new territories because of biotic pressures. Also, human population has gown up drastically over the years increasing pressure on the adjoining forests. The villagers are forced to go deeper into the forest in search of fuel wood and for other forest products. For this reason, leopard attacks have also been reported.
A senior forest official, on the condition of anonymity, concedes that, "There has been wide erosion of habitat and green cover in the area due to the development projects. As a result the animals are pushed to the peripheries of human settlements in search of food."
In the recent spate, five people have died over the last few months. The suspect is a tigress that killed a shepherd a fortnight ago. The forest department is finding it hard to deal with the situation, as the area is about 1,000 square kilometers.
The locals have demand that predators either be killed or caged. Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife) of Maharashtra, B Majumdar, says, "Most of these cases have happened when people ventured into the forests, except in Talodhi where it attacked them in paddy field." So it is important to look: who is infringer, is it man or the animal?"
In the meantime, the newly-constituted National Tiger Conservation Authority has sanctioned Rs 36 lakh to the forest department to deal with the situation.
Belinda Wright, executive director of Delhi-based Wildlife Protection Society of India, is of the view that human-animal conflict is set to be the primary issue for wildlife conservation in India in the coming decade.
"Apart from the Sunderbans, tigers do not go around hunting people. What is happening here is very sad and very unusual. The first job at hand is to accurately identify and remove the offending tigers by using scientific methods such as digital pugmark identification and camera traps." She is confident that "by pooling all the expertise and information available, it should be possible to put a stop to the tiger attacks around Tadoba."
"Success leading to tragedy is a complete failure of the forest department. Are we conserving tigers to kill them as in Talodhi," asks Debi Goenka, Bombay Natural History Society.
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