Pesticides Kill Wildlife in India

Media reports from India indicate that the carcasses of 5 tigers found dead  between  2012 to 2015 in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh between the period  were found to contain organochlorine pesticides notably DDT. It is thought that the tigers consumed  pesticide laced carcasses  of dead animals  which were used as  baits which resulted in their death. Some of the tiger carcasses were found to lack nails, forelimbs and whiskers. Tiger parts are used for local occult practices and also have a lucrative market in Tibet and China.

Precious wildlife like this are killed either intentionally or unintentionally by pesticides. Pesticides are used  by  poachers who illegally trade animal parts. Pesticides are also used by  irate farmers who lose their livestock due to the wild carnivores for  taking ‘revenge’  . Sometimes, wildlife stray into fields and crop estates and unknowingly consume crops laced with pesticides resulting in debilitation and death.

5 years ago, two tiger cubs were killed in Ranthmabore NationalPark by villagers who allegedly killed the tigers by baiting them with goat laced with the deadly pesticide Aldrin in ‘revenge’ of the tigers killing their cattle.

Often wildlife is killed accidentally such as when they consume crops laden with pesticides. In 2011, deaths of two pregnant elephants and other animals in tea estates around Kazinranga  national park in  Assam  was reported . The park is home to the Indian one horned rhinoceros  and about 50 per cent of the endangered  Asiatic wild water buffalo.  The elephants had been killed by eating insecticide laced grass in the tea gardens outside the confines of the national park. This highlighted serious problems in the area . Tea estates are sprayed with pesticides, which drifts into the nearby areas onto the grass and waterways. Wild herbivores and domestic livestock that feed on the grass contaminated with pesticides often die. The deaths however do not end there though. Scavengers including vultures that feed  on the carcasses of the animals are then exposed to the pesticides  which in turn results in more deaths.

Earlier in April of this year, an elephant was found  outside the forest area in Mankarai, Tamilnadu suffering from severe ulcers in and around its mouth, which prevented it from feeding . Wildlife conservationists  attributed this to the consumption of corps laden with pesticides by the hapless animal.

Humans vs Tigers

I have been following an interesting news of a match of Humans vs Tigers. The eventual outcome was a draw: one man and a tiger cub killed on each side.

 The story is that six men from Simpang Kiri village in Aceh Tamiang district went to the Mount Leuser National Park on Sumatra Island for harvesting agarwood (used in incense and perfume). I am assuming that this was probably illegal since national parks does have restricted entry and harvesting this precious material is probably regulated. Nonetheless, they set traps to catch deer (again, I am unsure about whether this amounts to poaching) and caught a Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) cub instead (which eventually died). This action attracted 5-7 tigers in the vicinity who, quite notably, chased the men. The men climbed up some trees and hung on to dear life for five days, subsisting on rainwater. The tigers, equally persistent, remained at the base. One man was mauled to death when he fell down after a branch snapped. The others contacted nearby villagers via the cell phones. The villagers were helpless, but eventually "tamers" and the rescue team drove the tigers away.

 I could debate at length about whether the men deserved the plight they faced, but more interesting is the behaviour of the tigers. The Sumatran tiger is the smallest (75-140 kg - Prothero et al, 2012) and is critically endangered (Sunarto et al, 2013). It is endemic to, well, Sumatra and the population is around 350. The low numbers are due to deforestation and conversion of lands into acacia and oil palm plantations, fires, and poaching (O'Brien et al, 2003; Sunarto et al, 2012; Johnson, 2013) . This plight was recently highlighted by Sunarto et al, 2013, who calculated that numbers were much lower in the Riau province which was believed to have the highest concentration of tigers (Banerjee, 2012, state that the population had declined by 70%; from 640 in 1982, the numbers fell to 192 in 2007). In a previous paper, the same authors proved that tigers are not particularly fond of plantations and settlements, preferring large contiguous and undisturbed forests and higher altitudes. However, the authors also encourage using the plantations as "corridors, stepping stones, or mosaics of connectivity facilitating animal movement"- which, in my humble opinion, is a recipe for disaster for both tigers and humans.

Indeed, it is sad that a human life and a tiger life were lost. But it could have gone in a few different ways. Five other humans could have been killed. So could have 5-6 critically endangered tigers. We very seldom recognise how our lifestyle preferences (I too have found agarwood to be particularly heady) might be only aggravating human-animal conflict elsewhere...

 Image source: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-2885355-b-w-sumatran-tiger.php

References Kimberly Elizabeth Johnson (2013). Living Off the Fat of Another Land: Trans Fat Social Policy and Environmental Externalities Environmental Policy is Social Policy – Social Policy is Environmental Policy, 37-50 DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-6723-6_4  
Timothy G. O'Brien, Margaret F. Kinnaird, Hariyo T. Wibisono (2003). Crouching tigers, hidden prey: Sumatran tiger and prey populations in a tropical forest landscape Animal Conservation, 6, 131-139 DOI: 10.1017/S1367943003003172
Donald R. Prothero, Valerie J. Syverson, Kristina R. Raymond, Meena Madan, Sarah Molina, Ashley Fragomeni, Sylvana DeSantis, Anastasiya Sutyagina, Gina L. Gage, Size and shape stasis in late Pleistocene mammals and birds from Rancho La Brea during the Last Glacial–Interglacial cycle, Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 56, 21 November 2012, Pages 1-10, ISSN 0277-3791, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.08.015.

Sunarto Sunarto, Marcella J. Kelly, Karmila Parakkasi, Sybille Klenzendorf, Eka Septayuda, & Harry Kurniawan (2012). Tigers Need Cover: Multi-Scale Occupancy Study of the Big Cat in Sumatran Forest and Plantation Landscapes PLoS One DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0030859  

S Sunarto, Marcella J. Kelly, Sybille Klenzendorf, Michael R. Vaughan, Zulfahmi, M.B. Hutajulu, & Karmila Parakkasi (2013). Threatened predator on the equator: multi-point abundance estimates of the tiger Panthera tigris in central Sumatra Oryx, 47 (2), 211-220 DOI: 10.1017/S0030605311001530

Insanity in Zanesville

1 baboon, 2 wolves, 2 grizzly bears, 3 mountain lions, 6 black bears, 8 lionesses, 9 lions, 18 Bengal tigers. Indeed a rich count for an impressive menagerie. Unfortunately, all shot dead in Ohio.

For the benefit of those readers who may be unaware: Vietnam war veteran Terry Thompson committed suicide, possibly spurred on by piling debts and a disintegrating marriage. But before this act, he did something unexpected- he released his 55 'exotic' animals from their cages in his Muskingum County Animal Farm in Zanesville and opened the fences. The result was utter chaos, resulting in the police hunting and killing the 49 animals listed above. The surviving six animals (3 leopards, 2 celebes macaques, and a grizzly bear) are being quarantined at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.

Google image 'Ohio animals' and you will find quite a many photos of the surreal carnage (which gave me nightmares for a long time). What struck me was how the animals were shot down dead by the police. Majority of the population seemed to justify this action. After all, the deputies didn’t have tranquilisers, it was close to nightfall, and it wasn’t exactly in a middle of nowhere location. But even the use of tranquiliser darts didn’t seem to have much effect- some animals were killed since they charged at them (after all, tranquilisers does take a while to act); others were killed since they might lose sight of the tranquilised animal which might revert to normalcy when the tranquiliser wears off. Yet, I would maintain that the death count could have been significantly lowered by using strong tranquilisers and/or by strategically disabling them. Is the trigger-happy nature so ingrained that the only solution was this carnage?

More disturbing is the fact that a sizeable number of animals were donated to Thompson by owners who found them difficult to manage as adults. And what is much more disturbing is the high incidence of such ‘exotic’ animal owners in the US.
And many are the other questions: whatever spurred Thompson to make such a reckless action? Was it to spite his neighbours and the authority? Or was it just to give them some freedom as his final act? If he was deep in debt, surely selling a few acres of his farm should have been a better option than suicide? And what did these animals do to deserve such a bloody fate?

The fine line

Animal-human skirmishes are recurrent occurrences, typically at forest-settlement boundaries. Such examples abound in the forested, mountainous Western Ghats, where the humans have (legally and illegally) established their dwellings and agricultural fields virtually on the doorsteps of the forest inhabitants. Such conflict can be mainly classified into two:

-When humans encroach (mostly unlawfully) into their territories to collect firewood or forest products (including illegal felling of trees and hunting of deer and rabbits).

-When wild animals stray into the settlements and agricultural lands, usually during times of drought when the streams dry up. In the case of Ponmudi, the Kallar river becomes the focus of such skirmishes: the areas bordering the perennial (but relatively shallow) river continue to be fringed with foliage and both parties wage their battle over the resources. This is further aggravated by humans who illegally harvest wild grasses and reeds (Ochlandra travancorica) during the fair weather. This deficiency and destruction of habitat shifts the animal population towards the fertile agricultural lands with consequences such as attacks by gaurs (Bos gaurus), elephants harvesting plantain and coconut trees, wild boars utilising the cultivated tubers, and bears searching for anything edible. It is not uncommon for deer to end up in cooking pots, resulting in leopards retaliating by feasting on goats, calves, and dogs (!). Similarly, jackals target chickens and there are cases of attacks by tigers too.

In the case of urban wildlife, the boundaries become vaguer. Our family home is located in an area supposed to have been a forest around 150-200 years ago (presumably until a manor was constructed for the Chief Secretary of the government). Since then, it has been transformed into a sector of houses (both old and new), most having limited grounds (those which do have what is termed ‘well-maintained’ grounds, i.e. backyards devoid of trees).

In this instance, I cannot state that humans have ejected the resident wildlife out of their territories- such an event would have happened quite a while ago. The area is still frequented by numerous local and migratory bird species, including kingfishers (who were very fond of our outdoor fish ponds), crow pheasants, kites, kestrels, pigeons, cranes, and herons, as well as palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus), mongoose (Herpestidae), squirrels, and bats (to name a few). But such peaceful coexistence is not the norm. A neighbour has made the full use of urban wildlife by laying traps for civet cats and mongoose, both of which end up either in his cooking pan or sold for high prices to vendors of quack medicines (civet cat meat is supposedly a cure for asthma).

Snakes tend to reach deplorable ends, regardless of their nature (poisonous or non-poisonous). Even the rat snake (considered to be auspicious) suffers a terrible plight due to mistaken identity. In our grounds, we’ve had kraits (Bungarus coeruleus) and vipers, apart from a regular ‘visitor’ of nearly four decades- a 6-foot hefty cobra (Naja naja). But recently, after being burdened by just too many reports of snakes nesting in an aged clump of golden palm trees in our front garden (next to our verandah), the parents uprooted the thicket and found, to their surprise, a huge nest of vipers. This brings one to the question- where does one draw the line?

Mongoose caught in the trap of our neighbour

Save Our Tigers

The Save Our Tigers is a collaborative campaign run by Aircel and WWF-India.

I recently came across their poignant advert (which you can view here).

With the Chinese New Year (interestingly, of the Tiger!) barely 3 days away, tigers have been placed on WWF’s list of ten critically important endangered species facing extinction. There are only 3200 tigers left in this world (a reduction of 95%), spread over the subspecies of the Amur, Bengal, Indochinese, Malayan, and Sumatran tigers. Three subspecies (viz. Bali, Caspian, and Javan tigers) are now extinct, and the South China tiger have not been sighted for the past 25 years.

In India, from an estimated 40,000 tigers a century ago, only 1411 tigers remain in the wild (according to a study conducted by the Wildlife Institute of India, in association with NTCA, Government of India, 2008). The Bengal tigers (the national animal of India) have, unfortunately, become an easy victim to the avaricious and callous man. It was cruelly hunted during the colonial times and its parts are now used in certain indigenous/traditional Asian medicine.

Please, let not our descendants read about the tigers like we now read about the dodo.

Please register your support and do the spread the word to your friends and acquaintances as well. You can also join the Facebook page or tweet @saveourtigers