In a rare incident recently a tiger is reported to have killed a tusker in the Eravikulam National Park near Munnar, intriguing forest officials and wildlife enthusiasts alike. For tigers have never been known to attack elephants — let alone kill them — being physically no match for the pachyderms. Perhaps, this was a territorial feud — common in the wilds — and the tusker presumably was ailing and weak. Yet it’s hard to imagine a tiger taking on an elephant and besting it.
On a brighter note, the incident proves that the ENP does harbour a few tigers — a fact not many are aware of and which makes heartening reading against the dismal scenario of the sharply declining tiger population across the country. And, ironically, the tiger is our national animal.
In this context it’s pertinent to mention that Munnar’s former British tea planters foresaw the need for wildlife conservation well before it became a dire necessity. Keen hunters themselves, they ensured that only those tigers that were man-eaters or persistent cattle-lifters were eliminated — a minuscule number. In fact, the Brits roped in the Muduvans, local tribals, as forest guards to prevent poaching and report wildlife sightings on a daily basis.
Thanks to the foresight and unrelenting conservation efforts of the British planters — a tradition ably continued by their Indian successors — the tiger survives in the ENP and adjacent tea gardens. In fact the park’s seclusion and virtual inaccessibility make it a safe haven for the felines which sometimes migrate to the tea gardens for a change of diet — to feast on unwary cattle.
Clifford Rice, an American who researched the tahr in the ENP in the early 1980s, was perhaps the first to film a tiger there. His colour photo of a magnificent beast lithely strolling down a hillside graces the lodge deep in the core area of the park.
In 1991 while trout-fishing near Munnar, I got the fright of my life when a tiger suddenly growled nearby and noisily bulldozed its way through the undergrowth towards me. I hared up the hillside to a safer point and, breathless, turned to glimpse the feline as it emerged to slake its thirst — only to have my view obscured by the untimely descent of a huge bank of dense mist. However, I did hear the tiger sloshing around. One night a few years ago a planter-friend was astounded to find a tiger sauntering ahead of his jeep on the arterial Munnar-Coimbatore road.
For several precious and heart-thumping seconds it stayed within the beams of the jeep’s headlights before melting into a tea field. My friend still regrets not having a camera with him then. Another tiger scared the daylights out of a tea planter by suddenly crossing his path as he motorcycled through his estate. The same evening it killed a cow nearby and gorged on it for a couple of days before abandoning it, half-eaten. I inspected the ‘kill’ — quite a gruesome sight — and found several strands of the tiger’s hair as well as its pugmarks.
It’s indeed encouraging that several other tiger sightings have been reported in recent years. Given Munnar’s commendable track-record of wildlife conservation over the years — an outstanding example being the highly endangered tahr which was saved from the brink of extinction — there’s certainly hope for the survival of the tiger in these hills.