India coordinating a hunt for a man eating tiger

Over the last two years a tiger in India has eaten 13 people. It is highly unlikely for a tiger to take to eating humans, but generally if one starts it needs to be removed from the wild. Due to the pressures on wildlife territories, and loss of surrounding lands, tigers are coming into contact with humans more often. This makes man eating far more likely.

Forest rangers will essentially deal with this by launching a military style operation with tranquilizer guns on several elephants. The tiger will then be sent to a zoo.

The problem is that clashes between humans and tigers have got worse in recent years. India has had great success in growing their tiger population over the last decade from 1400 to 2500. The problem is that many of the tiger reserves are only real on paper, with no tigers within then. Furthermore, tiger corridors designed to allow tigers to migrate between reserves are increasingly degraded so that they can’t function. Given many of the reserves are too small to have viable tiger populations, eradication of these corridors will in the long-term also eradicate these small tiger populations.

Dealing with these problems will greatly reduce the risk of tigers becoming man eaters.

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