Saturday, November 7, 2015

Shashi aka Bamera

Shashi had very short tenures of everything in his life. He left his motherland at the age of 36 months and came back at the age of 50 months or so. Although he never showed his presence by challenging any dominant male in the area, Sundar or Shaki.
That time I photographed him sitting quietly 100 mtrs away from a mating pair. 

They all knew each others presence but because he never posed any threat that day the dominant male Shaki ignored him altogether and He was not dominant so female didn't show any interest in him. 
He spent another year avoiding these two dominant male in Tala Range. He never had a chance to show any dominance on any of the female in Tala Range but he was always muscling.
Reason why her mother left the area was his slapping her on a dispute on a kill.
At last he was the one who challenged his own father and pushed him successfully.
I will say that he did not had more than 30 months peace in his life as Dominant male. Even less than that because once people saw him chased away from a kill by two young sub adults male from Mirchahni. 
He had to face lot of resistance from these young males of Tulsi and Wakeeta but somehow he survived for some time but not very long.
It was these cubs who injured him badly in 2012 and he was missing for more than a month licking his wounds somewhere safe in some cave.
When he was seen he was still limping.
He never recovered from these wounds.
Another male Rahasy chased him away and beat him up in Chakrdhara.
He was chased from his main area of Chakradhara to Chorbehra side where he started moving till Thauni.
Here he met with another male Jobi and had a good fight with him.
In this fight he got his both foreleg injured but left one was more than other and Jobi lost his one eye.
In last three years he was hardly ever seen eating a natural prey killed by himself otherwise he was always seen attacking cattle.
He was unable to walk properly but otherwise he was perfectly fit to challenge any Tiger.
He proved this in last summer when he lost one of his tooth in biting to Tarun.
This day Tarun was challenging Jobi and they both were intimidating each other but none had the courage to charge.
After seeing Jobi going out of his territory Tarun started going back to his own sanctuary but he met Shashi on way. Probably in utter frustration of not being able to deal with Jobi this male charged on Shashi.
Shashi, showed him the strength of a Tiger although he was having an abscess in his both fore leg.
He bit him hard on his shoulder.
Mahavat saw two tigers rolling over on each other and growling but he was so far away that he could not recognise the other tiger. When he came nearby he saw Bamera sitting with blood dropping from his mouth.
This is the time when we reached to the spot and when we heard the story we went to look for other male.
We found him sitting behind the bushes licking his shoulder.
All what we could see through binocs that this male has both the eyes intact and blood oozing out from his shoulder.
He was not Jobi but Tarun.
In this fight Shashi / Bamera got his teeth damaged. This blood from his mouth is coming out of his gums.   
Last one year or so was worst.
His injury on his left foreleg pad was still weeping. He had this injury since last 18 months or so. But last summer he had abscess in his both forelegs.

This made him unable to run faster and in this monsoon this wound must have gone bad to worst. 
In August one day while coming back from Umaria I saw him crossing the road and walking in the grassland. He use to stop and shake his left fore paw. I thought he is limping more than usual probably because he got some thorn or stick or some mud struck to his wound.
His survival on cattle was a real threat not only on his own life but also on the life of the staff who were monitoring him or the Forest Staff in whose territory he was surviving. Forest staff were threatened regularly by the villagers.
He was a big liability in open area.







Sunday, November 1, 2015

Pug Mark Impression Pad

Pugmark Impression Pad or PIP is one of the most useless practice adopted by forest department. They just don't gain anything from it.  This is a practice from older days when staff use to try to recognise the pugmark of an individual Tiger. Now it is just counted the pugmark of a tiger male or female. No one has any clue that if there is a male pugmark here then which male? 
By this method number of tigers remain the same while tigers goes missing.
Today afternoon I was with a guide who saw a Tigress opposite siddhbaba in Tala zone last year. he and driver wasim saw the female while tourists saw cubs running on hills.
This tiger was never seen with cubs again while her cubs pugmarks were seen in Chakradhara last year.
So where these cubs gone?
In a similar case last year Tulsi lost her one of the cub which was never seen again, Wakeeta lost her one cub and one is with her now but the third cub is missing and no one knows his/her whereabouts.
Her cubs from last litter is not seen in park area so they are also treated as missing.
Mukunda male who came to Bhadrashila area from Mukunda is missing since last season. Two cubs of Hemi from previous litter are missing.
There are so many people walking in the park in the name of Patrolling but none could find the dead body of these missing tigers.
All these people on foot and on bicycle are more of a disturbance to tigers than anything else.These people needs to patrol the periphery of the park from outside.
This constant presence of human being in there area must have affected their predation habit. Now we very rarely see any Tiger walking on road.
Some of the young cubs are still not habituated with the presence of these foot patrolling staff so they runs away for safety. 
These foot patrolling staff needs to check all the PIP to report the pugmark. Who compile those datas? No one then why we are wasting so much manpower on this very unproductive practice?