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

[peter]

TIGERS IN NORTHERN INDIA AND NEPAL - PART III

This post is about the geography and the people of Nepal. In the thirties of the last century, the people of Nepal were deeply religious. This is one of the reasons many animal species survived for so long. 

Nepal tigers probably are the largest wild big cats today, this although they inhabit unhealthy and hilly regions. What's special about these regions? And what's a 'dun' (where the largest tigers live)?

I know those of you interested in measurements and tables will struggle a bit with this post, but my advice is to give it a try. If you succeed, you will understand a bit more about Nepal and the conditions that suit tigers.

In order to prevent selection, misunderstandings, interpretations and alleys going nowhere, I decided to use direct quotes only.     


f - Population

" ... The earliest inhabitants were Dravidians ..., whose dialect is still surviving in the plateau of Chota Nagpur and amongst races on the Southern slopes of the Himalayas and the Terai, including Nepal. But these primitive races have been ... enslaved by two waves of invasion, by the Mongolians from the north and the Aryans from the south and west, and have largely disappeared now. The two remaining branches of the population of Nepal are thus: (1) Mongolian or Tibeto-Burman and (2) Indo-Aryan. While the Aryan invaders of India were pouring into India from Iran through the north-western passes - somewhere in the second millenium B.C. - the Mongolian emigrants were pouring in from Tibet through the northern passes, and, roughly speaking, the latter occupied the northern, central and eastern tracts of Nepal, while the former found themselves in the western and southern tracts ... " (pp. 9).

" ... At a much later date, there was a further invasion, which has had a predominant influence on present-day Nepal. As a result of the Moghul invasions, a number of high-caste Thakurs and Rajputs, driven out of Rajputhana and Central India, took refuge in the Himalayas, and from these immigrant have descended the present rulers and nobility of Nepal. Thus the family of the Maharajah traces descent back to the Rana family of Udaipur.

This invasion, if tradition can be believed, had another and more humble influence on the population of Nepal. The malarious and deadly Terai is inhabited by a race called the Tharus, who are practically immune to malaria ... " (pp. 9).

The famous Gurkha battalions of the Indian Army were of Mongolian origin. Two centuries ago Gurkha was a petty kingdom in the Gurung country with a small hill village called Gurkha as capital. In 1742

" ... Prithiwi Narayan Shah became king of this village and surrounding territory, but before he died in 1775 he had conquered the valley of Nepal itself and consolidated his power and expanded his kingdom ... in the east, to the passes of Tibet to the north, to the Terai in the south and far to the west, thus becoming the first king of Nepal ... " (pp. 10).

      
g - The natural history of Nepal

" ... The total area is about 54.000 square miles and it stretches about 540 miles in length parallel to the Himalayan axis, and averages about 100 miles in breadth ... " (pp. 12).

" ... It is interesting to note that Nepal has within or on its boundaries 26 peaks of over 24,000 feet which include 12 of over 25,000, eight of over 26,000, three over 27,000, and the one and only mountain in the world over 29,000 feet. Such an agglomeration of high peaks makes Nepal unique amongst all the countries of the world. This brief description of the boundaries of Nepal will suffice to explain how natural features and geography have rendered a policy of isolation from the rest of the world. Only on the southern frontier is the country at all accessible, and this frontier is backed by a great belt of dense tropical forest, which runs its whole length, and is intensely malarious for seven or eight months of the year. Behind this Terai belt lies the trackless and equally unhealthy Churia or Siwalik ranges of foothills, behind which, again, is the long range of Mahabharat that forms a further barrier to the hill districts of Nepal ... " (pp. 13).

" ... There remains for consideration the 'Mades', a continuous belt along the southern boundaries consisting of three distrinct sub-zones, (1) the Terai proper, (2) the Bhabar, and (3) the Churia and Bhidri 'Mades'. It is these three zones which chiefly concern this book, as it is in them that the tigers, the leopards and the rhino live, and in them therefore all the big game shikar occurs ... " (pp. 15).  

" ... The Terai is a fertile well-watered alluvial plane, about 250 to 600 feet above sea-level. Originally the Terai was covered with dense forest and was notorious for its unhealthy and malarious climate. But now a large proportion of the whole has been deforested and cleared for cultivation, and the process is still continuing, although there are still large islands and pockets of forest ... in some districts ... " (pp. 15).

" ... North of the Terai belt and south of the foot of the hills, approximately from 600 to 1,000 feet above sea-level, lies the Bhabar or, in Nepali, the Charkosya jhari (eight-mile wide forest). Here the Terai alluvium has been overlaid by sand, pebbles and boulders, which during the course of ages have been washed down from the hills by the streams and rivers. The soil is dry, infertile for cultivation, and so porous that even drinking water is usually unobtainable during most periods of the year. It is therefore quite unfit for colonisation, and efforts to create village settlements are foredoomed to failure. An example of such a failure is Amlekhgunj (the terminus of the Nepal Government Railway leading to Kathmandu), which means place of the free, where emancipated slaves were given land and huts, but little or no cultivation survives to-day. The Bhabar is almost as malarious as the Terai, despite its dry nature. Although this eight-mile wide belt is unfit for cultivation, it is ideal for growth of forest trees, and the Bhabar still is, and always will be, forest ... " (pp. 15).

" ... North of the Bhabar come the foothills, the Churia Range. This last rampart of the Himalayas rises abruptly from the gently sloping plains to a height of 2,000 to 4,000 feet, tier on tier of wild, broken and uninhabited country, intersected by ravines and streams where tigers and sambhar roam. Near the mouths of the great Himalayan rivers, the Kosi, the Narayani and the Karnali, this range of foothills is composed of enormous river deposits of boulders, pebbles and sand. These, ..., were caught up in the last spasms of Himalayan uplift a few million years ago, to form these unstable hills liable to swift erosion, but in Nepal protected for the most part from such erosion by virgin forest.

Where these old river depostis do not exist, and behind them on the north where they do exist, is found a range of sandstone hills, more stable, more fertile, with still more luxurious forest vegetation. Between these two ranges are found the 'duns', the largest and most famous of which is the Chitawan big game preserve in the Rapti valley ... " (pp. 15-16). 

A 'Dun' is

" ... a fertile, but usually malarious land-locked valley between the lower Himalayas and the outer Siwaliks (cf. Dehra Dun, Patli Dun and many others). This Churia Range is completely uninhabited by man, clothed with primeval forests of sal and pine and bhabar (or sabai) grass, a wild medley of broken ground, with steep or precipitous slopes and dry, pebbly stream beds bordered with other grasses, the ultimate home of tiger, leopard, wild dog, and the deer - sambhar, chital, barking deer - on which they prey and live ... " (pp. 81). 


h - Summary

The things to remember are geographical and political isolation, religion, and the three zones that have tigers (the Terai, the Bhabar and the Churia Range). When you read about tigers and the Terai, you now know that they do not mean the Terai proper (as cultivated), but the Bhabar and the Churia Range. 

As you made it to here, I thought of a fitting reward. This is Bob Hoskins in Nepal. His elephant, by the way, was warned, not attacked, but it was a bit much for poor Bob. Watch the footage between the male tiger and his cubs:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2pqhqx

Here's a few nice photographs: 

http://www.neilhcarter.com/tigers-in-nepal.html

And here, to finish the post, is a bit more on a recent reserve expansion:

http://news.mongabay.com/2015/09/big-reserve-expansion-gives-tigers-a-boost-in-nepal/ Reply