Casting doubts over the entire official accounts provided by the forest department on shooting down the cattle-killer tiger in Wayanad on Sunday, it has now emerged that the department has shot dead the same tiger it had earlier captured and released in the wild on November 14.
The Wildlife Conservation Society India (WCS), headed by Dr Ullas Karanth -- one of India’s leading tiger ecologists and member of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) -- has come up with the finding that the tiger killed by the forest department staff near Moolamkavu on Sunday was the one captured and released at Kuruchiad range earlier.
The forest department has till now maintained it had trapped a tigress on November 14 and the one that was shot dead on Sunday was a male.
The finding would put the government in the dock on whether the animal actually needed to be killed. It also lends credence to the charge that the forest department had adopted an unprofessional and callous attitude in handling the entire issue and the life of the big cat could have been saved. The huge public uproar over the issue after the released tiger continued to kill cattle could also have been avoided.
The team of wildlife experts, comprising Dr Karanth, Dr N Samba Kumar and Narendra Patil, came to the conclusion after comparing the photographs of the tiger taken on two occasions in Wayanad and matching them with the camera-trap photos of the animal in their tiger database using advanced pattern matching software.
Dr Karanth said that it was a mistake on the part of the forest department to release the trapped tiger back in the wild as it was seriously injured and appeared to be emaciated. “Given its advanced age, emaciated condition and serious injuries, we believe it should have been held in captivity permanently,” he said.
He said the wildlife managers in the region needed to be better equipped and the public more tolerant towards problems involved in dealing with conflict situations.
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