(IN): Shoot at sight orders against tigers

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Link:

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20070032726 & ch=11/13/200\

7%2011:49:00%20PM

 

*Shoot at sight orders against tigers*

 

Sanjay Tiwari

Tuesday, November 13, 2007 (Sonarpur, Maharashtra)

The ongoing census projects a sharp decline in India's tiger count, while

Maharashtra government issues shoot at sight orders at Tadoba - one of the

country's finest tiger habitats.

 

But the irony could not be starker, as NDTV encountered armed forest guards

who don't know how to use guns and there are villages that have illegally

encroached forest space.

 

Forest guards have been sent to Sonarpur village in Maharashtra to kill

man-eating tigers from the adjoining Tadoba Reserve. The orders are to shoot

at sight.

 

Ironically, forest guard Vairagade has been armed only with a basic

self-loading rifle and gun training, which he received 17 long years ago.

 

NDTV met another shooter Vijay Hardiya, a 28-year-old police constable. He

has not used any gun in 10 years of service.

 

Vairagade and Hardiya and four other shooters form a crack team of six - a

team that has never shot a moving target.

 

But shockingly they are Maharashtra's government's answer to tiger attacks

in the region in which 21 people have died in as many months.

 

''The tiger is a moving target. It does not stay in one place. So we have

asked the department to

organise shooting trainings,'' said Rahul Sorte, Range Forest Official,

Talodhi.

 

*Laying baits*

 

For about a week now the shooters are laying baits. Their target, two male

tigers last sighted near Sarangarh and Gaimukh and one tigress near

Sonarpur.

 

''Quite frankly, the police won't be able to tell a male tiger from a female

tiger. So the idea of calling in the police to shoot is absurd,'' said Bittu

Sehegal, Editor, Sanctuary.

 

Sixty-five year-old S F Quader, a wildlife activist from Hyderabad has

rushed to Tadoba after hearing about the shoot-at-sight orders.

 

''These guns are SLR, not designed to shoot animals. They are for practice

shoots or injuring humans,'' said S F Quader, Wildlife Activist.

 

A tiger's picture has been proudly put on display at the entrance of a

forest office in Brahmpuri. And the officials have just left armed with a

shoot-at-sight order. An irony considering India is trying to preserve the

dwindling tiger population.

 

The conflict begins in the buffer zone between the Tiger Reserve and the

Brahmapuri Forest, where villages have eaten into forest space.

 

The extent of their intrusion, a huge 10 per cent of the buffer zone where

no human habitation is allowed in the first place.

 

But looking at their grazing cattle it's difficult to know that we are

actually at the border of the Tiger Reserve. No wonder most attacks have

taken place here.

 

''We are scared to come to the fields alone. We come in groups,'' said

Parshuram Madankar, villager. But backed by local politicians it is the

encroachers now, who have the louder voice.

 

''If tiger attacks and killings continue, we will take people's support and

kill the tigers,'' said Prof Atul Deshkar, MLA, Brahmapuri.

 

Tadoba has become the microcosm of the man-animal conflict, a battle that

the wild cats seem to be losing.

 

''It is one of the world's finest tiger habitats. It's a carbon sink, a

climate moderator. Instead of protecting it, they want to build a dam right

in the heart of the corridor connecting Tadoba to Brahmapuri. You start

disturbing things and creating a conflict and then say, my god, the tiger is

doing it,'' Sehegal further said.

 

 

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