ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[GuateGojira]

Dr Seidensticker captured that tiger in Sundarbarns, and after the dead of the specimen, Sankhala started a black campain againt him and the "western" scientists. At the end, he was the cause that the Smithsonian Institute did not made the tiger study in India. Gladly the goverment of Nepal was more friendly and the Nepal Tiger Project started with the first radiocollared tigers. 

After that, Sankhala started with his policy of protected parks, the strategy worked in that moment, but sady ignored the fact that those parks needed to be interconnected, something that the new science support. Latter, when the first tiger died in Nepal, he returned with his bad publicity against the work of the Smithsonian team in Nepal, but again the Nepalese goverment allowed the continuation of the study.

That same idea agains the methods of study tigers with scientific tools and the black campain, was used against Dr Karanth blaiming him for the dead of several tigers in Nagarahole when in fact he only radiocollared 4 specimens! Just to refresh, the first old male T-01 died from injures of a fight with other tiger, despite been treated by the vets, the other male T-03 died after a fight with a gaur. The same happen with Dr Chundawat in Panna, and I have his entire testimony and the evidence of this.

It seems that the case of Sankhala is less about science and conservation and more about nationalism and politics. In fact, Dr Chundawat mentions a case that one scientist of his personal from Indian origin was rejected by the Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC) from the project in Panna just because he had British ID and they said that "tiger conservation in India was a controversial issue and one could not ensure in this case that there will not be dissemination of sensitive information"! Dr Chundawat says: "I still cannot understand why tiger conservation is considered such a controversial issue and why ecological information on tigers is so sensitive that it cannot be shared with the rest of the world". So, now we know why much of data on size/weight and specific behaviour lacks from some of the scientific papers from Indian scientists. Reply