Shocking update from Bandhavgarh...

[Bibhav Behera]

I was browsing on the net when I found a link to this article... Shocking news...

http://blog.taragana.com/n/tigress-f...avgarh-144877/

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Shocking indeed, thanks for posting.

[Ashvary Jain]

Ya this is really a very shocking and sad news....

The tigress was found dead few days ago and had three 7 months cubs,,...
These cubs don't even know how to hunt, thus know feeding them had become a matter of concern for the officers....
They had been kept in a 100 hectares reserved zone at present, and few young goats are left there so that these cubs could learn hunting.....
But are also given the meat, coz at present they are not very successful to hunt those goats.....

With this all parks officials have started giving there useless suggestions...
But some higher [and intelligent] officers of the park had said that they are not interested in sending these cubs to any zoo, and will prefer to keep them in Bandhavgarh only......

[Mrudul Godbole]

Read this update on this thread so posting here -

Cubs get second chance to live free

For those who remember the film Born Free about a game warden playing surrogate dad to Elsa, an orphaned lion cub in Africa, a similar story is unfolding closer home.

Staff at Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, 550 km from Bhopal, are rearing three tiger cubs in near natural surroundings with the intention of releasing them in the wild once they mature. The cubs’ mother died of poisoning in August.

“We plan to release them after we are confident they can fend for themselves,” said Bandhavgarh field director C.K. Patil.

The cubs — two females, one male, all aged 10 months — are in a 3-hectare forest enclosure. “Human contact is minimal as we don’t want them to lose their wild traits,” said Patil.

The guard who gets them water stays out of sight. Live goats are released but not regularly — to maintain an element of uncertainty, typical of the wild.

“For the first few weeks, the cubs were given meat. Then they started killing,” Patil said.

The task at hand is a challenge, he said. “Killing goats is different from killing wild herbivores that are far more agile.”

“But a free life against life in a zoo cage makes it worth all the effort,” the director added.

This isn’t the first human-tiger adoption. In the ’70s and early ’80s, orphan cub Khairi — named after the river on whose banks she was found — was reared by then Project Tiger director Saroj Raj Choudhury in Orissa’s Simlipal forest. Her story didn’t have a happy ending though as Khairi died of poisoning before her release.

Link - http://www.hindustantimes.com/Cubs-g...e1-472859.aspx

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Well, it is not easy to teach these young ones. The art of hunting is the most difficult. Breaking the neck of the prey is a fine art. It takes time to master this even after a thorough tutelage under the tigress mom. In the initial days, lot of adolescents kill like a leopard. Ultimately, these three tiger cubs will learn to kill in that manner.

There was one controversial experimentation in South Africa with chinese tigers taken from zoo. Those tigers learnt to kill their prey by choking.

However, I am ok with this experimentation in Bandhavgarh. Death in wild while struggling to survive is better than a life in prison (some call it Zoo).

The case of Khairi was different. She was living in constant glare of media and was used to humans. She used to live with Saroj Raj Choudhury. It is a fact that towards the end, it was unmanageable and she was shot dead. Initially, then had tried to hide it as death due to rabies contracted from dog and other such stories.

Sabyasachi

[Ashvary Jain]

I guess allowing the cubs to see other wild animals preying would help them to learn faster...