BILLY ARJAN SINGH’S TIGER BOOK

By Arjan Singh

Arjan Singh (1917–2010) in his activities has spanned both eras of Hunting and Conservation. From his farm, Tiger Haven, in Uttar Pradesh, where he stayed from 1959 to 2010, he extensively studied the varied wildlife of the area, and reared and successfully returned to the wild, a tigress and two leopards. A spokesman for the tiger, he waged many a crusade against environmental destruction. In recognition of his field work, he was awarded the World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal in the year 1976.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Dec 1, 1998
• ISBN: 9788194597353

Book preview

This is an anthology on the tiger in India. The contributors come from various walks of life (conservation, wildlife, ecology, photography and film-making) bound by a common interest in the tiger. Jim Corbett was a hunter turned conservationist who edited India’s first magazine on the subject; his ‘Chowgarh Tigers’ is the sole hunting story written in a different age of changing circumstances by a man who forsaw the possible extinction of the tiger, but reacted violently because of the involvement of the human element. Nicholas Courtney is a writer, broadcaster and documentary film-maker. Valmik Thapar is a photographer, documentary film-maker and writer. Fiona Sunquist is a wildlife writer and photographer. Mel Sunquist is a wildlife ecologist. In the modern context the extinction of this glamourous cat is a spectre that haunts all of us. The magnitude of this loss will make itself felt only when the species is in limbo. It behoves civilised humanity to ensure the tiger’s survival, and the great forests he needs to live in, and of which he is the symbol.

Arjan Singh (1917–2010) in his activities has spanned both eras of Hunting and Conservation. From his farm, Tiger Haven, in Uttar Pradesh, where he stayed from 1959 to 2010, he extensively studied the varied wildlife of the area, and reared and successfully returned to the wild, a tigress and two leopards. A spokesman for the tiger, he waged many a crusade against environmental destruction. In recognition of his field work, he was awarded the World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal in the year 1976.

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To

Jim Corbett

The First Conservationist

Contents

I

NTRODUCTION

1. T

HE

C

HOWGARH

T

IGERS

Jim Corbett

2. M

ATURING

S

ENSES

Arjan Singh

3. A W

ILD

T

IGRESS

Arjan Singh

4. T

HERE IS A

R

AGING

T

IGER

I

NSIDE

E

VERY

M

AN

Nicholas Courtney

5. P

ADMINI

Valmik Thapar

6. S

PLAY

T

OES

—A

LMOST A

M

ANEATER

Arjan Singh

7. T

HE

M

AULING

Fiona Sunquist & Mel Sunquist

Introduction

Cats are predators, all of them hunters, stalkers, climbers, takers. There is no value judgement in that. To judge the cat because it takes its prey is to question the wisdom of the blackbird and to despise the purple mattin for its meal near a picnic site. You cannot judge a fragment of nature. You cannot use wisdom like surgery to extract and judge, lift free of its matrix any small shard of life, and nod at it in approval or disapproval. That is not only arrogant, but foolish, in the opinion of Roger Caras.

There is only one view of the natural world. A world view or a cosmic one, and since we are part of it we must never forget to judge ourselves as well. Our appetite is no kinder to the world around us than that of the cats, no gentler, no less demanding. There is nothing wrong with sentimentality, nothing at all wrong with a gentle appreciation of beauty, but in that hour when the body must be served, sentimentality is a poor judge of protein. With eyes half closed, with a grinding and unrelenting inner hunger to be sated, we eat what we must and so does the cat. And then we sleep and so does the cat. We do not design the plan, but we live it and that is true of the cat too. But that is the only parallel.

The cat goes where he thinks his prey will be, and then the stalk begins. It is parry and thrust, at a distance safe for one, but maybe not for the other. Two intelligences lock, dance and manoeuvre: one lives and the cat is a living thing. Nature in all its complexity is coming alive.

The evolutionary history of the 36 modern cats both large and small is traced back to a rather small, insectivorous mammal early in the Cenozoic era, roughly about 65 million years ago. The earliest representatives of the carnivora found as fossils and classified as miacid are already morphologically separable into two distinct lineages, namely; the verines and the miacines. Members of both lineages however display the dental features of carnivores, that is shearing teeth and a specialized jaw joint.

Members of the miacids were small mammals, rather like the civets today. They had relatively small brains and many primitive features in the skull. It is likely that they were forest dwellers and hence were rarely fossilized. However fossilized remains of some members of both lineages have been found in rocks deposited some 40 million years ago. Later the modern group of carnivores apparently developed in a burst of diversification. The reasons for this proliferation are however not clear and it is suggested the that radiation among the carnivores occurred in response to a diversification in prey species, which in turn was stimulated by radiation in plants.

During the subsequent diversification some similarities on morphology and life styles developed such that, some parallels could be drawn between each group, as well as a wider diversification which establishes that the modern great cats have not essentially descended from the sabre tooths. The tiger, closer to the true cat than the taller lion is the largest of the great cats. Although lacking the phantom qualities of the quintessential cat the leopard, the tiger is the largest feline alive. The extant record of the Siberian tiger shot in the Sikhote Alin Mountains of Russia in 1953, weighing 855 lbs, is unlikely to be surpassed. Though comparable in size to the lion, their girth of limb is much greater. The Maharajah Jodh Shamsher Jung, in Nepal shot a tiger in the year 1934 which was found to weigh 705 lbs.

Though essentially solitary, this condition may be partially influenced by the habitat and prey availability conditions for as many as seven tigers have been found sharing a large prey. Tolerance, especially among related females is similar to the genesis of the lion pride, where the main fluctuations among prides are the dominant males who control territorial rights and resident lionesses, depending for their status on the balance of power. Familial coexistence in the case of the tiger, depends on the density of the prey species and tolerance in the solitary tiger. For intolerance increases with population getting out of control and ultimately as with humans, a free-for-all is triggered off by unlimited competition.

The origin of the tiger was at first credited to the Chigar caves of Northern Siberia, but now supported by scientific opinion it is believed that they may have had their genesis in Southern China. From there driven by the Ice Ages, population expansions and search for new prey, they moved south and southwest towards Indo–China, Sumatra, Bali, Java, India, Burma and the Caspian mainland. Now in another racial fluctuation from an estimated population of one hundred thousand, their numbers have fallen to perhaps five thousand, declining all the time in direct competition with human kind.

Three of the subspecies are extinct, and a fourth almost gone. Influenced by environmental conditions the tiger attained a unique morphology in accordance with Bergman’s Rule which pontificates that, races of warm blooded mammals in cold climates tend to be larger than their counterparts in warm climatic conditions. Whereas Gloger’s Rule lays down, that those in cool dry areas tend to have paler pigmentation than those sub-races in regions of higher humidity or heat.

It can therefore be presumed that a reintroduction of sub-races could solve the local problem of extinction. Yet four of these sub-races have been allowed to drift into oblivion, chiefly because scientists wish to retain racial purity. The peculiar situation that prevails now is that although zoos have Captive Breeding Programmes, most have no affiliation with countries where wild reintroductions are possible. This ultimately results in a brief exchange of zoo animals, followed by vasectomies, birth control, and euthanasia to control the surplus population build up, together with the planned extinction of generic tigers i.e. those of mixed subspecies, to maintain racial purity. The uncontrolled vitiation of inbreeding will ultimately lead to extinction. It is imperative that we should try and re-evolve the races where over the millennia the ancestral oversize Siberians could attain the morphology of the undersize Balinese, and where the generic tigers instead of being bred to extinction for no fault of their own, could redeem their unfortunate existence, for they are already half way to a change of form.

The tiger has always been in competition with humans from the early ages, when man was born, and he cowered in the shelter of deep caves to the middle and early modern ages where tigers threatened the very survival of man in certain habitat areas. With the advancement of technology and refinement in the means of destruction, the terminological application of ‘Sport’ to the wanton taking of life combined with the unbridled reclamation of habitat areas and the encouragement of trophy hunting has degraded the balance of survival by the slaughter of prime breeders.

So called sport hunting is the basis of all the degradation which has emerged with the slaughter of wildlife. Killing for sport is an elitist pastime for which millionaires pay big money to Outfitters for Guided Hunts. Local inhabitants who live in proximity and in competition with these slaughtered animals resent the fact that while wealthy entrepreneurs, and outfitters make big money from the millionaires from foreign countries, who remove the trophies under licence, they receive no profit, and are penalised if they happen to be apprehended if they poach for their protein starved family.

A similar resentment pertains to modern Wildlife Tourism which has now taken the place of the Sport Killers. Luxury Lodges cater to the comfort of tourists seeking relaxation from the high pressure of society in affluent countries, but the peripheral inhabitants of the Park still get nothing in the way of compensation. They are the direct conduit for poachers and smugglers. People with no bargaining powers, who are directly pressurised by middlemen, and with a modicum of profit, contribute to the multimillion racket which has emerged with commercial poaching with its worldwide ramifications.

Ivory, the first source of big money was legitimised with the opening of the dark Continent. Frederick, Courtney, Selous and Karamoja Bell were probably the first of the ‘animal derivative’ money earners, who massacred countless elephants and made vast fortunes. Great tuskers were mowed down often with firearms mounted on tripods. Ivory which turned the scale at 221 lbs per tusk holds the record; it has now dwindled to a tenth of the weight, and yet whole herds are slaughtered in Southern Africa. Richard Leakey torched two and a half million dollars worth of ivory in an effort to break the racket. But the fabulous expatriate is now the victim of local politicians, who covet the home of the elephants in Tsavo National Park. The prospect that, the great descendents of the mammoth and the mastodon will not survive to inherit the earth is sad indeed. As Peter Matthiessen writes in The Tree Where Man was Born: ‘Of all animals the elephant is the most difficult for man to live with. Yet its passing, if this must come, seems the most tragic of all… There is a mystery behind that masked grey visage, an ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires and the seas’.

In November 1969 the general assembly for The International Union for Nature and Natural Resources met in New Delhi. Among other papers presented, was one by Kailash Sankhala stressing the deteriorating status of the tiger, and seeking the intervention of the International Agency in its protection. At the end of all deliberations, which generated a great deal of sympathy and alarm at the declining census figure of 1827 a resolution was submitted, calling for a ban on tiger shooting, which supposedly earned much needed foreign exchange for the country. The Assembly passed a resolution proposing a moratorium on hunting until further studies, and protective measures ensured favorable population trends, and also suggested its replacement by the tourist potential of the tiger. The acceptance of the resolution put 26 shikar companies out of business. Although expressing concern at the deteriorating status of the tiger the outfitters did not see fit to transfer their resources to tourism.

Instead they claimed that tiger hunters were prime conservationists too, as their activities kept poachers away. One of them even submitted a writ petition in the Supreme Court against the Sunderbans Tiger Project and thereafter went on to open a hunting