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Bigcats News
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MAN MAULED BY TIGER AT TADOBA TIGER RESERVE.
PUNE, Monday 25th July 2016 In a case of man-animal conflict, a 55-year-old man was killed by a tiger at the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) in Chandrapur district near Khutwanda village on Sunday morning. The man, identified as Manik Jumnake, had taken his cattle for grazing along with a couple of others. Jumnake was attacked when he went looking for one of his cows. GP Garad, chief conservator of forests for TATR, said, "The location of the attack was at the border of the core and buffer areas of the reserve. One of his animals had wandered away and a tiger attacked Jumnake when he went behind it. There were some signs of the tiger attack at that time, which were missed." He added that the victim's family would be recompensed but it is an accidental case at present as the man ventured too close to the animal's territory. "In such cases, we first give them a compensation of Rs 25,000 immediately and then start the procedure for giving out the rest of the amount to the tune of Rs 8 lakh. People here are very understanding and generally don't make unnecessary demands for trapping the animal. We consider that option only if the same tiger attacks repeatedly," he further stated. TATR is known for a healthy population of tigers. After the attack, locals were scared to venture in the area due to fear of being attacked and the body was retrieved in the afternoon after the arrival of the forest department officials. http://www.rahejaproductions.com/news_details.php?newsid=697&month=07&year=2016 (07-25-2016, 05:23 PM)sanjay Wrote: In BEIJING wildlife zoo, where a tiger mauled a visitor to death and left another seriously injured, has been closed. At the end of the article they also say "Entrance to the park costs £5, and visitors can feed the animals - although they aren't allowed to get close to the attraction's larger residents." Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3705064/Woman-mauled-death-tiger-family-ignoring-warnings-jumping-car-Chinese-safari-park.html#ixzz4FRNEiHbf I wonder what they mean? 
Notorious tiger poacher Sansar Chand’s son arrested for wildlife trade
 *This image is copyright of its original author Read the full story in the link below http://m.hindustantimes.com/delhi/notorious-tiger-poacher-sansar-chand-s-son-arrested-for-wildlife-trade/story-e3O4ZCmkpryWL5uIVnYmjP.html Save Wildlife With Me-SWWM Tiger spotted at 12,000 feet in Uttarakhand for the first time: Report In 2009, pugmarks of a Royal Bengal Tiger were found in the snow at an altitude of 10,000 feet in the Himalayas near Jelepla in eastern Sikkim. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/i...e-2943916/
An open letter to wildlife biologist Ullas Karanth
This relates to the alleged involvement of Jaychandran, a WCS India program associate in the death of a tiger. He has been implicated in the poaching case.  *This image is copyright of its original author As you are aware, B Selvakumar, the poacher who was caught red-handed (October 1, 2015, FOC 02-2015) with 43 pieces of tiger bones and a nail in the Punanjur wildlife range in Billigiri Ranganathaswamy Temple tiger reserve, has confessed that he had been paid by Jaychandran to lure a poacher with financial reward.In the bargain, Selvakumar had hired six petty criminals - Shekar, Palaniswamy, Murthy, Nanjappa, Marimuthu and Vadivel to shoot a tiger in Tamil Nadu’s Satyamangalam forest. Since Jaychandran was named by Selvakumar, the investigation officer from the Karnataka forest department wanted to interrogate Jaychandran. But, Jaychandran, your WCS India program associate, is on the run. You claim that Jaychandran is a reputed wildlife conservationist. If that be true, then he should cooperate with the investigation officer and absolve himself of the heinous wildlife crime. If he is honest to conservation, he should answer questions related to this poaching case. Whatever good work Jaychandran had done in the past has been irrevocably damaged by this allegation. Probably, he was influenced! A conservationist of your ilk should support the cause of the tiger. But, intriguingly you are supporting an associate who has been implicated in the poaching of a tiger. Why? Selvakumar is on record. He has stated that he was paid by Jaychandran to nab a poacher. Had Jaychandran not paid him, Selvakumar wouldn’t have hired Shekar, Palaniswamy, Murthy, Nanjappa, Marimuthu and Vadivel to kill a tiger. The tiger would have lived its life. We wouldn’t be lamenting the death of one more of tiger. You were responsible for the death of nine tigers during your radio-collaring experimentation in Nagarhole. You were also in illegal possession of tiger bones at your research centre in Nagarhole tiger reserve. The bones were dumped at a ranger’s office. Poor man, he was suspended for no fault of his. But the government did not persecute you. You have drawn multiple international donors, raking in dollars in the name of the tiger. You even illegally transferred an international agency-sponsored Pajero in your name. The SUV was given to WCS. The government waived duty. But you benefitted. WCS boasts that it is responsible for the increase in tiger numbers in India. But, you aren’t worried about the death of a tiger, which was brutally shot dead by greedy poachers. Instead, you have steadfastly stood by the reputation of Jaychandran. Why? You have knocked on every door, administrative and judicial, to ensure that Jaychandran is absolved of the crime. Why? You met the Karnataka Advocate General Madhusudan Naik to discuss about this poaching case. You tagged a former advocate general to present Jaychandran’s case. Your clout inspired Mr Naik to call an assistant conservator of forest, who is probing the case, to Bangalore. It is good that Mr Naik has heard both sides of the story. As the advocate general, Madhusudan Naik has to put the state’s interest first, not that of an NGO. If he fails to do so, his integrity could be questioned. We are already intrigued by ACS Mahendra Jain’s courtesy call to your office before he was unceremoniously transferred by the government of Karnataka. Curiously, Mr Jain had insisted that the principal chief conservator of forest (wildlife) accompany him for the meeting. It is intriguing that you are approaching high-heeled officials in Karnataka, when the case is being heard in the Tamil Nadu court? What is bothering you? Are you worried that Jaychandran could spill the beans during interrogation? Could Jaychandran put WCS in a quandary? Are you concerned about WCS’s reputation? Who funded Jaychandran to sponsor Selvakumar? If WCS is not guilty, why is it running from pillar to post to shield Jaychandran? A wildlife biologist who prospers on tiger funds should protect India’s flagship species, not a poacher who has merely been called for questioning. As wildlife enthusiasts, we want you to come clear on this tiger poaching issue. Is WCS involved in the tiger’s death? If it isn’t, then it should allow the case to run its course. (PS: We request all wildlife enthusiasts to share this open letter in the larger interest of wildlife conservation. We want NGOs to work in the interest of wildlife conservation, not against it) The writer is a senior journalist, wildlife conservationist and member of Karnataka Wildlife Advisory Board Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Newskarnataka.com and Newskarnataka.com does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same - See more at: http://www.newskarnataka.com/opinion/an-...61Bsd.dpuf 
Tiger tears off a car’s bumper in Beijing’s wildlife park where a woman was killed earlier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAzRAtXC1yU#t=57 
Persian leopard poacher in northern Iran sentenced to two years imprisonment.
 *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
I'm not sure how aware you guys are with whats going on in Kaziranga right now, but they are having some of their worst flooding in recent history
Over 300 animals killed in Assam floods in Kaziranga PTI | Aug 2, 2016, 08.02 PM IST Highlights
 *This image is copyright of its original author Aa rescued infant rhino calf is transported to safety after being found by wildlife officials and volunteers i... Read MoreGUWAHATI: 310 animals, including 221 hog deer and 21 one-horned rhinos, in Kaziranga National Park (KNP) lost their lives due to the devastating Assam floods+ . According to the KNP Divisional Forest Officer Suvasish Das, 310 animals were killed by floods since July 25 this year. Out of this, 221 were hog deer and 21 were one-horned rhinos, he said. Among the killed rhinos, ten were calves aged between two to six months, Das said. " Flood level this year+ is much higher compared to 2012, but animal mortality was highest in 2012," he said. Das said 106 animals were rescued during the floods+ with help from local residents. "Out of nine rhinos rescued, eight are currently undergoing treatment at CWRC, Borjuri and one was released instantly," he said. Das said flood water was receding fast and out of 130 inundated camps+ , only 70 were currently under water. Top Comment Sad really sadAmber Hasan He also said around 135 km of roads have been affected and many bridges have been damaged. "Actual assessment will be carried out later this month. There are very few cases of stray rhinos this year and we are vigilant about all rhinos that are straying across NH-37," Das added. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india...509005.cms
Vijayagovindarajan Deenadayalan
Male tiger found dead in coffee estate in virajpet (near Nagarahole) Kallahalla range Karmad in coffee estate, Karnataka,India  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
Cause of Death : Unknown (awaiting autopsy)
One more tiger has been found dead in Pench Tiger reserve in Seoni district, Madhya Pradesh under mysterious circumstances — taking the toll to 10 from the same tiger reserve this year. The last tiger death from this area was reported on July 16. Decomposed carcass of a male tiger was located in the buffer area, said forest officials. They believe big cat died three days ago. Autopsy would be conducted as per guidelines of National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), officials at forest headquarters in Bhopal said. "We have collected viscera samples for examination," said the officer. A decomposed carcass of an adult tiger was found in Pench's Gumtara range on February 1. While Pench forest officials could not ascertain actual cause of death, insiders say the tiger was poisoned to death. As per last census, there are 50 tigers in Kanha-Pench reserves. Madhya Pradesh has lost 22 tigers in last eight months, and all of them have met unnatural deaths.  *This image is copyright of its original author WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON??? This year has been especially disturbing to me, so many unnatural tiger deaths, it makes me sick!
Royal Bengal tiger's carcass found in Kaziranga National Park.
JORHAT: Carcass of an adult male Royal Bengal tiger was found in inundated Kaziranga National Park (KNP) in upper Assam on Tuesday, a senior forest department official said. The carcass was found in Siga Forest Camp under Agoratoli Range, Kaziranga Divisional Forest Officer Sivashish Das said. Forest department officials and veterinarians, who rushed to the spot said after preliminary investigation that the big cat had died after a fight with buffaloes, Das said. A total 298 animals, including hog deer, wild boars and 17 rhinos have been killed in the current wave of floods+ that have submerged 90 per cent of the World Heritage site, forest officials said. 
Rare Persian Leopards Released Into Wild Near Olympic Town
For the first time, the Russian government reintroduced captive-bred animals into their native habitat—a nature reserve near Sochi—but their future is still unclear.  *This image is copyright of its original author A Persian leopard walks through the grounds of the reintroduction center in Sochi. Photograph by Umar Semenov By Maria Antonova PUBLISHED August 4, 2016 Sochi, RussiaOne by one, the three leopards emerged from their cages and moved lithely down the hill, away from the cameras and to the safety of the green canopy of the Caucasus Nature Reserve. That moment, captured in July by Russian state TV, would be the last time they see humans—or so scientists hope. Akhun, Killy, and Victoria became the first captive-raised Persian leopards released into the wild anywhere in the world. Russia's Center for Reintroduction of the Leopard in the Caucasus, launched in 2007 as part of Sochi National Park, aims to bring the predator back to the Caucasus Mountains. It once roamed a great territory stretching from the foothills above the Black Sea in the west down through the northern Caucasus into Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. If successful, the effort would boost the subspecies (also known as Caucasian leopard), which has lost 84 percent of its range since the 18th century, according to a recent study in the journal PeerJ.  *This image is copyright of its original author Return of the LeopardsThe release of three Persian leopards into the wild is an attempt to reintroduce the species to the western Caucasus. Russia Caucasus Nature Reserve Sochi Sochi National Park Vladikavkaz Makhachkala Black Sea Caspian Sea Range Confirmed Georgia Possible Tbilisi Historic, circa 1750 Trabzon Armenia Azerbaijan Baku Yerevan Turkey Asia Europe Azerb. Area Enlarged Africa Van 50 mi Iran 50 km LAUREN C. TIERNEY AND JEROME N. COOKSON, NG STAFF SOURCES: PETER GERNGROSS, BIOGEOMAPS; JOSEPH LEMERIS, BIG CATS INITIATIVE; ANDREW STEIN, LANDMARK COLLEGE AND IUCN CAT SPECIALIST GROUP; ANDREW JACOBSON, ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON The study found that 87 percent of wild Persian leopards now live in Iran, though sightings in the Caucasus possibly suggest some small, fragmented populations. (Related: "For Leopards in Iran and Iraq, Land Mines Are a Surprising Refuge.") “The idea was that there will be one large core population in Iran and a second in the Russian Caucasus that would support the small groupings and thus the species itself,” says Igor Chestin, head of WWF-Russia, a project partner. So far, the program has bred 14 animals at the captive-breeding center in Sochi, and plans to release a total of 50 in the next years, all of them equipped with satellite collars to track their whereabouts. However, this ambitious plan to produce a genetically viable population from scratch isn't simple—and it's complicated by possible expansion of ski resorts around the 2014 Olympic town of Sochi, conservationists say. The Making of a Predator The leopard’s demise in the Caucasus began after Russia conquered the area in the second half of the 19th century and turned it into royal hunting grounds. Imperial authorities proclaimed the leopards pestilent and awarded generously for their skins. The extermination campaign by guns and prey spiked with strychnine—a type of poison—continued into the Soviet period, until the leopard was labeled an endangered species in the 1950s by the Soviet government. The species is now listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. By then leopard numbers were too few for the population to recover on its own, and scientists decided to launch the breeding program with four leopards caught in the wild in Iran and Turkmenistan, whose progeny would then replenish the Caucasus population. (Also see pictures of Persian leopards in Afghanistan.) The three animals released in July were the first born in the center, in 2013. “My motto for this work is artificial stimulation of natural instincts,” says Umar Semenov, head of the Sochi reintroduction center, a 29-acre (12-hectare) facility that includes a breeding area and six enclosures with trees, ponds, burrows, and artificial cliffs. Here, Semenov and colleagues prepare animals for release via a training program that hones their hunting prowess and allows no human contact. Watch a recent video of one of the leopards leaping to freedom. “We stimulate animals by this environment, we create situations, provoking their intellect, their decision-making," he says, sitting in front of several displays showing feeds from the center’s 119 cameras. “We need them to be able to kill various prey in different conditions,” he adds, showing a video of one leopard pursuing a raccoon up a tree for the kill. Other prey released into the enclosures include deer, badgers, wild boars, and river rats. Employees track each hunt, noting the leopards’ focus and skill. So Far, So Good The program has had its rough patches, though: In early stages, Semenov and colleagues had trouble getting the animals to breed. In the past, scientists had only reintroduced leopards that had been caught in the wild, making the Sochi program one of a kind, says Mohammad Farhadinia, a co-author of the PeerJ study and a Ph.D. student at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit of the University of Oxford. Now "the Russians must be patient" to see how the captive-raised animals adjust, he says. So far, the three newly freed leopards seem healthy and are hunting prey, says Anatoly Kudaktin, a research scientist with the reserve who observes their movements via satellite collars. “This makes us happy, and is as was expected,” Kudaktin says. (See more pictures of big cats.)  *This image is copyright of its original author A captive-raised leopard peeks out at its new home before making the leap to freedom. Photograph by Alexander Yakubov The odds should be in their favor: "The breeding core of Sochi has been [genetically] shaped with the right individuals, both from captive ones and wild-caught ones to represent the subspecies properly," Farhadinia says. Persian leopards are less genetically diverse across West and Central Asia, he adds. Now that they've raised and introduced leopards, Semenov hopes the government will establish a protected corridor along the entire Russian Caucasus, carefully spacing out siblings to prevent inbreeding. Roadblocks First, though, the predators must thrive in the Caucasus Nature Reserve, which stretches from Sochi across the mountains for over 690,000 acres (279,000 hectares) and forms the bulk of Russia's Western Caucasus UNESCO World Heritage site. Kudaktin is worried that ski resorts created ahead of the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games will expand into neighboring refuges. Although some of the Olympics's development budget went to funding the reintroduction center, the Games's resulting buildup has already encroached on preferred migration territories of both leopards and their prey animals, with a new road along the Mzymta River cutting a major dividing range into two, Kudaktin says. (See "Leopards Have Lost Three-Fourths of Their Territory.") Regulation changes last year allowed for construction of tourism facilities in the Sochi Refuge, a sliver of protected area higher up the Mzymta, which is surrounded by the Caucasus Nature Reserve on three sides. The government had planned to combine the two reserves as compensation for Olympic development, and applied to UNESCO to protect the newly added area. However, following the regulation changes, in May, Russia pulled its UNESCO bid. The UN group reacted by saying that the amendments "can have particularly serious negative impacts on the reintroduction of the Persian leopard." Russian Greenpeace contested the changes in the Supreme Court, but the court ruled in July that tourism infrastructure inside the refuge is legal. If the area is further developed, “the population will be fragmented, which will inhibit genetic exchange” between leopards in the Caucasus Nature Reserve and those in Iran, says Kudaktin, who coordinates the scientific team tracking the cats. WWF's Chestin says resort development in the upper Mzymta would reduce the program from its international scale to a local effort that would allow at most 30 to 40 animals isolated inside the Caucasus Nature Reserve. Slippery Slope Even the reserve itself could be in danger after an amendment to the law on Russia's protected territories was unexpectedly piggybacked through Parliament in June on an unrelated bill, allowing construction of tourism facilities in Russia’s strictly protected reserves. Chestin and other environmentalists believe the legislative changes were lobbied by the ski resorts in Sochi. “This is classic corruption,” he says of the seeming contradiction between the government's efforts to support the leopard while simultaneously weakening protection of its habitat. Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment did not respond to a request for comment. Interros, which owns the Rosa Khutor resort, said in a comment emailed by its press service that there is no intention to build inside the Caucasus Reserve. The Russian company, which had been an early sponsor of the leopard project, does have plans to upgrade the Sochi facilities with four new ski lifts and 12 miles (20 kilometers) of slopes, but they declined to provide a map of planned construction. Gazprom, another company with a ski resort in Sochi, did not answer a request for comment. Chestin says he still hopes that President Vladimir Putin, a known aficionado of big cats, will step in to ensure the leopard’s habitat stays undeveloped. “He hasn’t said the word yet, so there’s still a chance,” he says. Staking New Territory Back at the breeding center in Sochi, Umar Semenov watches an exhausted female leopard lying in the grass as her three kittens, born in June, romp about, refusing to settle down for the night. "It would be ideal if they start reproducing in the wild," he says when asked where he sees the program in five years. "Then we could say the program is truly a success."
Great news, history isn't in their favor but as every failure occurs, we learn from it and adapt.
Hopefully this is the beginning of a new trend of success. 
One more tiger found dead in Chandrapur, Maharashtra India.
He is a male tiger from Bramhapuri and collard. According to forest department and a local newspaper, it died while fighting with another male.  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
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