Eyes on or hands on? A discussion of human interference

[GuateGojira]

(09-22-2014, 10:24 PM)'Pckts' Wrote: Once again, morphology has nothing to do with collaring.
" canine distemper" is a disease that is easily noticeable without collaring, if cats are becoming sick, than you can tranq the sick cat and blood test it, still don't need a collar.
Tiger relations is easily seen by stripe pattern, you can  tell witch tiger is which from their stripes, which of course is used now because of camera traps.

How can you say there is little stress from collaring?
This cats are "hunted and tranq'ed" then wake up with a foreign collar that they cannot remove around their necks, and in one case has killed the cat from the collar. As well as the discomfort it causes them and the stress they obviously go through from it.
Perfect example is T24 who has not forgiven the Forrest Department for doing that to him.
Sorry but there the stress far out weighs the benefits to these cats.
What is the goal, conserve big cats, correct?
How is that achieved
-Protect their Forrests
-Protect their prey
-Stop Poaching
Thats it.

 

Sorry dude, but you NEED to capture a tiger to measure it, it is LOGIC.

The example of the canine distemper is perfect, scientists in Russia found it during they studies and was the perfect moment to stop the spread. If they have not captured tigers, they will not have evidence to support they claim. Independent of they methods, capture tiger in Russia have provided over 70% of tiger knowledge in that area, previous studies were based only in track studies and a lot of inference.

Stripe patterns are good to identified individual tigers, but are useless to know the social relations. How many tigers arise from "no were" in camera traps? I have read many times "this tiger came from an unknown area". This is silly, as Nepal studies have show how sub-adults from different areas travel trough large areas and it was possible to know the sociability of tigers. Observations if Ranthambore are good, but those are just QUALITATIVE information, good but at the end, anecdotal and even biased, as they just capture single moments in tiger life and have NO form to know (or even understand) if those events are "normal" or just "random". Again, SCIENTISTS are my help here, as Dr Karanth states that just using QUANTITATIVE data, given by radio-collared tigers, it is possible to found enough events and trough statistical analysis, is possible to get a scientific statement about tiger behavior. READ the scientific documents, don't stick to the retrograded ideas of "ecologist" and park rangers than have made more damage than good in tiger ecology.

When an animal is captured, there is stress, but not as high as you claim. The animal is treated very carefully, its eyes covered and the noise in the area is close to "0". The collars don't cause discomfort, in fact, collared tigers have an EXCELLENT life, they hunt and breed normally. Where do you get this biased idea? Just because ONE tiger showed discomfort, doesn't mean that ALL showed the same, which is NOT the case. Again, all this thing of "stress" and "discomfort" is just paranoia, nothing more.

The goal is not just protect the big cat in a park, is to "know" it as it really is. Conservation is just a part of "Tiger Science", interestingly is the last part in any book, while Biology, Ecology, Sociability are always the first ones, showing that they are fundamental to save the tiger. Your idea of Conservation is too simple and although help to save the tigers in a broad way, they ignore the ecological factors of each area. You most remember that each region have its own characteristics and the idea of just "Protect forest" and "Protect prey" are useless if you don't know HOW to protect those specifically forest and those preys. Collaring tigers have opened the door the the REAL knowledge of tiger and you can't denied this fact. If tigers had not been radiocollared in Nepal and many parts of India, REAL knowledge of tiger would be much less than in present. Like I told you before, those testimonies of photographers in Ranthambore are good, but are no more relevant than the old reports in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. From my point of view and the scientists, only the reports of Valmik Thapar are reliable, and hust because he spend about 30 years in Ranthambore watching tigers.

Finally, you most drop this idea of "leave the tiger alone". This is not "Jurassic Park", this is a different world when this "idea" originally created National Parks that now are isolated because no one used Science to know that corridors are necessary. But guess what, where do you get that people get to know that corridors are necessary? From radiocollar studies.

I support my statements by evidence and by every single serious scientists that have actually studied tigers, what more do I need? Radiocollaring is good and necessary in the unstudied areas, but most be carried out by professionals in the field, not just park rangers. I don't know who collared that tigress in Panna, but from the scientific studies in Nepal-Nagarahole-Panna-Kanha-Sariska, just 2 tigers died and no one showed problems with its radiocollar (apart from malfunctioning, but that is irrelevant for the tiger itself).

Interestingly, this PARANOIA from India is not shared in America and Africa, where cougars, jaguars and lions are normally captured and radiocollared, and for that, the lion and the cougar information outweigh by a lot, the data of the tiger, and in the case fo the jaguar, magnificent information have came to light about this also elusive and forest-living great cat.
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