Likely as a result, from 2010 through 2019, tigers killed 383 humans and valuable livestock. India now has more than 50 reserves and nearly 3,000 tigers, according to the latest census.Īs the carnivores have rebounded and reclaimed some of their historic range, humans have pursued development in areas not far from tiger habitat. The following year, the Indian government launched Project Tiger, which created nine reserves. That decline prompted Parliament to pass the Wildlife Protection Act in 1972. Widespread hunting, along with habitat destruction, reduced their numbers from an estimated 40,000 in the 1950s to a mere 1,827 in the early 1970s. Tigers occupy a significant place in Hindu mythology, and the big cats are symbols of magnificence and valor.īut tiger conservation has not always been a top priority. They are the country’s national animal, placed under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, which confers the highest degree of protection for wild animals on the subcontinent. India is home to more than 70 percent of the world’s tigers. The forest authorities responded, tranquilizing the cat and relocating it to a zoo. The two tragic deaths troubled the local people, he says, so they lobbied for the tiger’s removal from the park. Madhusudhan is now a forest watcher in the reserve-a job offered to him as compensation for his father’s killing. After attacking Shivamadaiah, the big cat went on to kill another local resident. “It started getting close to human habitats,” he says it preyed upon cattle. The tiger had taken to roaming outside the forest in order to avoid competing with other tigers for food, says Madhusudhan. But then it pounced on their owner instead. A tiger had initially aimed for the cows, says Madhusudhan. After half a mile, they found Shivamadaiah’s half-eaten body lying under a large banyan tree. The group walked further, recalls his son, Madhusudhan, who like his father and many Indians, goes by one name. When a few people went to find him the next day, they initially came upon his ripped slipper. That night, Shivamadaiah didn’t return home. The roughly 330-square-mile forested reserve, known for its resident wildlife, lies serenely in the foothills of the Western Ghats in India’s southwest state of Karnataka. On a late August afternoon in 2019, a farmer named Shivamadaiah walked with his cattle near Bandipur National Park.
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