LUCKNOW: A pall of gloom descended on Jograjpur, a small village ensconced in the Khatur range of Pilibhit Tiger Reserve, last Sunday. Rajesh, 30, a farm labourer, had fallen prey to a tiger while working in a sugarcane farm along with six others.
Rajesh became the first victim of feline fury at the Pilibhit reserve in the new year. But more than 20 persons have lost their lives in the rising man-animal conflict in the range during the past one-and-a-half years, with 17 of them killed last year.
“It was hiding in the dense sugarcane crop and suddenly attacked us. We made loud noises to ward off the tiger, but it dragged Rajesh away,” said Rishi Pal. Forest aofficials said the tiger had strayed out of the reserve to make the kill.
It’s not just the Philibhit Tiger Reserve but the whole terai belt, including Dhudhwa, Katarniyaghat and areas of Lakhimpur Kheri, which are under the ferocious grip of the big cat.
The forest department attributes the killings to ‘sugarcane tigers’. However, sugarcane farmers of the terai area are up in arms against forest authorities, seeking their immediate intervention to protect the villagers.
Sugarcane tigers are those that stray out of the reserve and adopt sugarcane fields as their habitat. This includes the sub-adults pushed out of the forest by dominant male tigers and tigresses and cubs who find it congenial to take refuge in cane farms when the crop is ripe. “This increases the chances of man-animal conflict,” said a forest official.
Wildlife expert A N Singh said rapidly shrinking forest cover due to unmindful felling of trees was a major factor for frequent conflicts between man and wildlife. Pilibhit has around 23 per cent forest cover, which was declared a tiger reserve in 2014. It is spread over 70,000 hectares and has five ranges — Barahi, Mala, Deoria, Mahof and Haripur — as scattered patches of forest with villages in between. It is serving as a habitat to a bevy of wildlife species including Bengal tiger, Indian leopard, swamp deer, hispid hare and Bengal floricans. The reserve has around 325 villages with 3.5 lakh population.
The forest authorities have initiated sensitisation of villagers. “We have asked them to inform us in advance before going to reap the crops so that we can send a team of officials to ensure that there is no big cat in the fields,” said an official.
The villagers have also been asked to resort to haanka (lighting the fire, beating drums anddhols) to scare away the animal.