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Tiger deaths up in Tamil Nadu, one more poached

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Forest officials on Friday said they had arrested two men from Kookal village in Kodaikanal hills for poaching a tigress and attempting to sell its skin. The foresters said Kalyana Sundaram and Dhana Sundaram had poisoned the tigress in Kodaikanal on February 4. 

The poachers skinned the tigress but foresters seized the pelt when they tried to sell it in Coimbatore on May 1. The poachers evaded arrest during the May 1 seizure of the pelt by the foresters. 

Foresters in Kodaikanal arrested Kalyana Sundaram and Dhana Sundaram on Thursday on information from Coimbatore forest officials. The foresters said their accomplice, Karthick, is still at large. Foresters dug up the skeleton of the tigress in Kodaikanal on Friday.

The poaching of the tigress, which foresters said appeared to be a three-year-old in her prime, has taken the number of tiger deaths across the country to 25 since January this year. Seven of the tiger deaths or close to 30%, the most in any state, have been reported from Tamil Nadu. This is the first confirmed case of tiger poaching in the state this year. 

Three of the other deaths remain under investigation (in one case a villager is reported to have poisoned a tiger that had preyed on his cattle), one tiger died in what foresters believe was a territorial fight with another big cat, police shot dead a man-eater in the Nilgiris in January and foresters in February recovered the carcass of a tiger that was too decomposed to determine the cause of death.

Poaching of tigers is clearly on the rise in the state and in the country, data on wild tiger deaths from the National Tiger Conservation Authority.The country lost 63 wild tigers in 2013. Poachers killed as many as 48 of the animals. 

Tamil Nadu reported only tiger death, in the Nilgiris, on March 11, 2013, and old age and the authority cited old age as the cause of death in only two other instances.Forest officials have started a probe to uncover what they believe is a well-entrenched network of poachers in Tamil Nadu.

After digging up the skeleton of the tigress, foresters said the animal was around seven feet in length from head to tail. "Samples have been sent to our lab for investigation," Kodaikanal assistant conservator of forests M S Parthiban said.

The spot where the tigress was killed is close to both the Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sancturary in Tamil Nadu and Kerala's Eravikulam National Park in Idukki.The poachers told forest officials that they killed the tigress to protect their cows. 

"They claim that the tigress had killed a cow on February 2," Parthiban said. "They poisoned the half-eaten carcass expecting the tigress to return to eat the remaining part of the cow."

"The poachers followed the tiger for three hours after it ate the poisoned meat until it collapsed," he said. "But once the tiger died, they skinned it and attempted to sell the pelt."[/font]


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