Tiger kills man in Ranthambore - A first in almost 2 decades

JAIPUR: Tourist haven Ranthambore woke up to a grisly morning on Monday: a tiger had killed a man on the forest’s periphery. The tiger had gone for the man’s throat and shoulders.

So, is there a man-eater at large in Ranthambore which sees a steady stream of visitors, including VVIPs like Priyanka Gandhi and Sheila Dixit? Forest officials were quick to deny this, arguing that this was an accident.

“There are canine marks on the shoulder and throat of the man. Though the buttocks of the man appear to be eaten, we are ruling out that this was done by the tiger. He must have been eaten later by jackals which also roam in the area,” an official of the state forest department said.

But the rare occurrence has left forest officials worried. The last time a tiger killed a man in the state was in the early 1990s. This happened in Sariska, when a big cat mauled a sadhu.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/flora-fauna/Tiger-kills-man-in-tourist-hotspot/articleshow/5713952.cms

Panna disaster investigation caught in political slugfest

Tiger on its last leg

The Madhya Pradesh government remained in denial mode for years about the declining number of tigers in Panna till the wild cat went locally extinct, but its new Forest Minister has brought some hope for the beleaguered Park with his plainspeak. Sartaj Singh’s recommendation for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the Panna fiasco, almost countering the findings of a state inquiry committee report, is surely not a magic pill and is definitely not going to win him any friends in the bureaucracy and forest set-up. But the recommendation, if followed up by that by the Chief Minister, is surely a welcome change from the stand taken by the minister’s predecessors, who went blindly by the figures provided by the forest department officers and were hyper-sensitive to criticism.

The first warning bells in Panna were sounded by wildlife expert Raghu Chundawat several years ago when the then premier Park’s priority shifted from protection and monitoring to tourism.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Tiger-on-its-last-leg/594376

India rejects modification on China tiger farms by EU

India has rejected a proposal by the European Union to modify an existing decision for China to phase out Chinese tiger farms.

India made an intervention at the ongoing Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Conference of Parties in Doha, after the European Union suggested that tiger-range countries adopt an EU reporting system for making a wildlife crime database. The EU has suggested that the EU-TWIX database system be followed by tiger-range countries. And while the proposal also asks for phasing out of tiger farms, India thinks the proposal was not discussed with tiger-range countries, which are Asian, before being presented.

Further, India does not want any tampering with a previous decision in which CITES, the apex body for monitoring wildlife trade, pressed China for shutting tiger farms, keeping them only to a level which “supports” conservation of wild tigers, meaning minimising captive tiger farming as much as possible. As a result of another previous intervention made by India, it was decided that China report to the international body how it was shutting down its farms.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/India-rejects-modification-on-China-tiger-farms-by-EU/594371