COIMBATORE: A day after a man-eater was gunned down at Devarshola near Gudalur Taluk in Udhagamandalam, an expert criticised the team that killed the tiger, pointing out that the Standard Operating Procedures were not followed for handling such situations. The team included members of the State forest department, the Special Task Force (STF) and the Armed Reserve (AR).
According to Nawab Shafath Ali Khan, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) guidelines specify that a rifle with minimum calibre of 0.375 be used to kill a man-eater.
Khan, 56, is an advisor to six states (Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh UP, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra) on handling such emergency situations. He has hands on experience as he has tranquilized 10 animals and killed 12 others. Three of the animals he killed were man-eating tigers, six man-eating leopards and five wild elephants.
“After ‘declaring’ the man-eater, its elimination should be done by a Departmental personnel having the desired proficiency, while providing the fire arm with the appropriate bore size (not below .375 magnum),” says the NTCA’s SOP. However, the STF personnel on Saturday used a 0.308, which is incapable of killing the animal in one shot. In fact, the STF officials had to pump in four bullets before the male tiger could be killed. The idea behind using a .375 is to reduce pain and distress to the man-eater by killing it in one shot.
Forest department officials committed the same mistake while killing a man-eater at Gudalur on February 2015 and a sloth bear at Kotagiri in the same year, he pointed out.
“Because of the lack of awareness and training, an STF and AR personnel suffered bullet injuries in the process. That is a perfect example of mismanagement by the forest department. It is also very difficult to locate the animal using a STF rifle since it does not have a telescope,” Khan added.
Besides, instead of surrounding the animal, the team members could have offered a gap so that the animal got relief from panic situations and avoided pouncing back at them. Also, the forest department could have used Kumki elephants from Theppakadu elephant camp during the operation, he suggested.
“The life of the big cat could have been saved had the team members sitting in the treehouse (Machan) succeeded in tranquilizing it. They missed the opportunity though the beast was just 15 metres away,” Khan pointed out.
Rejecting the charges, N S Tejaswi, District Forest Officer of Gudalur maintained that they did not flout any NTCA norm. “There is no such guideline to use 0.375 rifle for killing a tiger or any other wild animal. We are using single and double barrel guns. Such rifles (.375) are not available in the Tamil Nadu forest. We killed the animal based on the order from Chief Wildlife Warden after the monitoring committee recommended the option,” he said.
“Every human being has a right to protect his life in case of animal attack. That’s what the STF did,” he reasoned.
It’s strange that Tejaswi was not aware of the .375 norm, since the SOP is readily available on the internet.