Tigress Avni killed: Farce of a hunt ends as 'man-eater' finally put down, but question of her cubs looms large

In the end, it was a bullet for the man-eating tigress of Yavatmal. Death came swiftly at the hands of Ashgar Ali, the son of private hunter Nawab Shafath Ali Khan, late last night. The official version is that Ali tried to tranquilise T1 (Avni), she lunged at him and he eventually fired. She was killed with a single shot. It’s a version shrouded in controversy as there are several missing links, but what else could be expected from a hunt which was a farce from the word go. [caption id=“attachment_5331701” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Camera trap images of tigress Avni. Images procured by Ankita Virmani[/caption] Her official name was T1 (though wildlife activists named her Avni). For the inhabitants of the 22 villages in Yavatmal however, she was simply baagh (vernacular for tiger), the beast that wreaked havoc on their lives. Thirteen people were killed in the past two years, though only five were attributed to T1, of which only two carried a 100 percent certainty rate thanks to DNA and saliva samples. In 2013, the National Tiger Conservation Authority laid down a Standard Operating Procedure for declaring a tiger a ‘man-eater’ and initiating its removal. The first and foremost requirement is to determine if the attack on human beings was accidental or intentional. In the case of T1, there were reports that the body of one victim was partially consumed, but the tigress had also been preying on cattle. The first order to shoot T1 was issued in January by the Bombay High Court but was set aside when wildlife activists filed petitions. In September, the Supreme Court upheld the shoot-to-kill order. Since then, the manhunt for T1 acquired a proportion akin to those carried out by royalty of yore, though the official line was that the first option was to tranquilise. From 200 ground personnel, including non-essential staff, a flamboyant private hunter with his own team, tracker dogs, camera traps, thermal imaging drones, para gliders, crates of cologne and even elephants, the forest area of Yavatmal was reduced to a circus arena. No wonder then that the hunt attracted worldwide attention even as dedicated conservationists and tiger experts watched in horror. And now it has ended as tragically as it was expected to. According to the All India Tiger Estimation Report 2014, there are 2,226 tigers in India. The census counts tigers both inside and outside reserves. T1 first made an appearance on the radar of forest officials in 2015, when she was photographed in the Yavatmal district. It is speculated that she may have come from one of the two tiger reserves nearby: Tipeshwar or Tadoba Andhari Reserve. Whatever her provenance, she is believed to have made her first human kill somewhere around 2016. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, but there were a few things that people involved in as well as familiar with the operation agree upon. The first being that T1 should have been taken out between the months of February and May and the second that both the courts and civil society need to understand that conservation is not about saving one animal but the species. “A man-eating tiger has to be removed otherwise you risk losing the support of both the locals and the forest official on the ground,” said conservation expert Valmik Thapar. If the local community turns against wildlife, then the survival of the species becomes difficult, agrees Anish Andheria, president, Wildlife Conservation Trust. “We need to understand that there are tigers in the wild because the villagers co-exist with them. The survival of the species depends on the local population. The only solution in a case like this is to remove the tiger and relocate it to a controlled environment. T1 will be replaced by another tiger now. But if the relationship between man and beast sours because of more kills, the next tiger may not have any chance of survival,” he cautioned. T1’s first victim was Sonabai Waman Bhonsle in Borati village (incidentally, T1 was also shot dead on Borati road) on 1 June, 2016. Accounts vary on how she was killed: though the widely held theory is that Bhonsle was taken from the field in which she was working. The killings continued till January, after which there was a break till August, when they began again. It is believed that between January and August, T1 moved deep into the forests with her new born cubs and since humans don’t venture that deep, the kills stopped. Gulab Mokashe, a resident of Wedshi village was a cow herder who, along with his younger brother Nathu, would take a herd of 30 to 40 cows for grazing into the nearby jungle. On 4 August, the brothers and the herd set out. They returned around 3:00 pm, but only Nathu made it home. While Nathu used to man the head of the herd, Gulab would bring up the rear. The villagers speculate that T1 took away Gulab during their return. They looked for Gulab the entire night, but it was only the next morning that they found his body with puncture marks. “We never had this problem before,” said sarpanch Ankush Muneshwar, referring to kills by tigers. He said the initial response of the forest department was to simply hand out money (Rs 8 to 10 lakh is given as compensation to families) without any real attempt to capture the tigress. “It is crop reaping time for us. We should ideally be spending close to twelve hours in the fields. Instead, we head home after 4:00 pm. Wild boars come into our fields at night. Earlier, we would stand guard during the night but that was out of the question till yesterday. We took a huge hit financially.” It was Muneshwar, who in an ecstatic phone call, early today morning, told this writer about T1’s death. Yavatmal is the cotton district of Maharashtra and field after field is dotted with the crop: the fluffy harvest ready to be picked. Last year, the crop was heavily damaged by an attack of the pink bollworm. For years, the region has hit headlines due to farmer suicides. The Vidarbha region recorded 329 farmer suicides in the first three months of this year, according to government data. CS Meshram, a retired railway employee and the self-appointed spokesperson for the people of Vihirgaon village, said they lost cow herder Waghuji Kanadhari Raut on 11 August in a manner similar to Gulab. Now, they can’t sleep at night. “Every day was spent tracking updates about her movements. We would leave our homes at 9 and be back by 3,” said Meshram, who claims they saw the tigress sitting on Raut’s body. Like Mokashe, Raut too belonged to a ST tribe: the Gowari community. Raut worked as a laborer and cowherd for hire. Tracking T1 was always going to be an uphill task, the added complications of petitions aside. The forest area is an undulating terrain marked with boulders and crevices. Post monsoon, the toxic lantana weed had taken root covering the entire area in thick foliage: making both visibility and movement impossible. “We got the thermal imaging drone for this very reason, but she proved elusive,” said Sunil Limaye, additional principal chief conservator of the forest. Motherhood heightened T1’s protective instincts and she became sharper in evading both sighting and capture. The private hunter Nawab Shafath Ali Khan stayed on despite earning the disapproval of Union minister Maneka Gandhi. He wasn’t far off the mark when he said he is always called in as the last resort. His team included three trackers, a veterinarian, and his son. When this writer met the Nawab and his son last week, Ashgar had been upset about them being painted as trigger-happy trophy hunters. “We have tranquilised many man-eating beasts in different parts of the country. No one talks about that,” Ashgar said. For the Nawab though, this operation was always going to be more challenging. “In all the operations I have done, there has been one tiger to catch or one leopard to tranquilise or one elephant gone rogue. Here, there are four tigers (including the male T2).” Seven tracking teams (apart from the Nawab’s) were on the hunt. Each one had a shooter carrying an AK-47, but only the Nawab carried a traditional hunting weapon: A 458 Winchester Magnum. The AK-47 was more for self-defence, but in 2011, a man-eating tiger within the Corbett reserve was shot at indiscriminately by security forces with AK-47s. “NTCA guidelines say that a .375 caliber or above weapon has to be used for a wild beast. Neither the police nor the forest department have these. An AK-47 is not a hunting weapon. If used on an animal, it will only wound,” the Nawab said. With the tiger population on the rise, more and more big cats are living in the wild. And while humans and the cats have found ways to exist till now, more and more such cases are threatening the balance. The spillover of urbanisation, be it in the form of more roads being built or industry development has meant that the habitat of wild beasts in India is rapidly shrinking, bringing them more and more in contact with humans. Writing for The Hindu in January, wildlife expert Prerna Singh Bindra said tigers are now confined to only seven percent of their original range: “…as human population boomed, forests gave way to fields and factories. Livestock edged out ungulates in jungles. The tiger’s realm dwindled.” Tiger reserves, like those in Tadoba, she further wrote are encircled by proposed development projects like coal mining. The shrinking forest space and presence of weeds like lantana even means that the base prey for the tiger is dwindling, leading to further encroachments in human settlements. The sambar deers’ dwindling population needs to be viewed through this lens. Five man eating tigers have been tranquilised and shifted to secure enclosures since 2013, but a sizable number have also been killed. One more can now be added to that list. Conservation cannot be romanticised for the sake of one animal, but shooting dead a new mother whose cubs are yet to be weaned off cannot be the answer. Conservationist Valimk Thapar—speaking before T1 was shot dead—feels it is important to go back to the drawing board to draw a tiger conservation policy for each state. “Why was a private hunter needed in the first place? In Ranthambore, there is a rescue team with a rescue vehicle that goes out at a minute’s notice”. In 2014, Ustad, a flamboyant reserve tiger who turned man-eater was removed and placed in a reserve. But T1’s fate was to be different. The villagers may sleep easy now, but the question of the cubs will continue to loom large.