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Endangered national animal: the royal bengal

                    ENDANGERED NATIONAL ANIMAL: THE ROYAL BENGAL

                                    BY: Mr. Rajesh Kumar Mohapatra

 The tiger (Panthera tigris tigris, Linn.)  the National animal of India is the centre of attraction in zoo, Sanctuary and National Parks. The Bengal tiger is the most numerous of the tiger subspecies. There are about 2,100 Royal Bengal tigers in the wild today; including 1,411 in India, 200 in Bangladesh, 150 in Nepal and 100 in Bhutan. Royal Bengal Tigers have a reddish-orange coat with black vertical stripes; white underside, cheeks and eye areas. Broad muscular body; long sensitive whiskers; long legs with sharp, retractable claw; long tail.  A tiger coat display a combination of three colors- white, yellow and black. The variation in coat color is not due to mutation, rather the gene for such expression is normally there in the gene pool of the species in hypostatic or recessive state. The background body color is controlled by a set of “agouti” genes and there alleles. Similarly the stripes are controlled by “tobby” genes and their alleles. During the process of breeding this mutant gene must have spread among some tigers in the forests. Mating of two coloured tigers, each having a mutant gene is likely to produce one white in four cubs. When a coloured tiger without a mutant gene is mated with a white one, all offsprings are expected to be normal colour only, indicating that the normal orange colour is controlled by  dominant gene and white colour by recessive gene. Mating of two white tigers always produces white offspring. Tigers have a lifespan of 10-15 years in the wild, but can live longer than 20 years in captivity. Wild tigers (Panthera tigris)) are nocturnal animals and usually solitary, except for females with cubs. They are territorial and males have discrete territories overlapping those of several females. Tigers use scent (spaying urine on the trees or other vegetation or deposited on a scrape), Scratch (marking on tree trunks with claws) and scrape marks on the ground to maintain contact and advertise their presence to others. The tiger in India breeds all the year round and the cubs are born in any month of the year. The gestation period is given as 100-108 days. The litter size is usually reported to be 2.33 cubs on an average per litter with a range of 1-3 cubs. At birth the tiger cub is blind and weighs between 800-1500 grams and measures 31-40 cm in length. Tiger cubs open their eyes in 7-11 days. Cubs stay with their mother and siblings until about the age of two when thy move on to establish their own territories. During these two years, cubs learn hunting techniques from their mother. The prey is killed mostly by fatal throat bite causing suffocation, strangulation or severance of blood vessels. Small prey is killed by a nape bite resulting in dislocation of head from vertebral column.

 Crisis and Conservationof tiger in India

            The tiger (Panthera tigris) is a high-profile endangered species that, despite several decades of concerted conservation action, continues to decline  However, the relative importance of protected areas and unprotected landscapes for tiger conservation remains poorly understood due to the lack of reliable data. Earlier efforts at prioritization of conservation targets for big cats such as tiger-human conflict, prey depletion, poaching, habitat loss and habitat fragmentation remain the most obvious threats to tigers in the wild, underscoring the need for political will to confront these challenges. The massive reduction and fragmentation of suitable tiger habitat since the end of World War-II as wild lands have been turned to agricultural land to fulfill the need of expanding human population. Second, people have continued killing tigers to reduce depredation on livestock, for their elegant fur and traditional medicine. However, a less obvious impediment to effective conservation is the lack of reliable information on the distribution and sizes of local wild tiger populations. Globally, the tiger Panthera tigris has lost 93% of its habitat and three subspecies in the last 100 years. (National Tiger action plan for Malaysia 2008 – 2020). The Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is categorized as Endangered on the IUCN Red List (IUCN, 2008) with a declining trend in population and a conservation dependent species listed under Schedule-I of Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 in India and Appendix-I of the CITES. This species is the most threatened large carnivore in India. The precarious conservation status of tiger has aroused global concern in recent years. Tiger has been an important flagship species for biodiversity and wildlife conservation in India over the past thirty years. India’s wilderness areas deteriorated rapidly after Independence, and by 1972 the country’s tiger population had dropped to a precarious 1827 individuals. With assistance from international organizations, including the IUCN and the World Wildlife Fund, the Indian central and state governments initiated a program to save the tiger. Project tiger, launched in 1973 with noted tiger expert Kilash Sankhla as its first Director, aimed at tiger conservation in specially constituted ‘tiger reserves’ (Khan, 2005). The core areas in these reserves were freed from all shots of human activities and the buffer areas were subjected to ‘conservation oriented land use’ to retrieve shrinking tiger habitats. This lead to an increase the tiger population in reserve areas, from a mere 268 in nine reserve areas in 1972 to 1576 in 27 reserves in 2003. But the country faced its second biggest crisis in the 1990s. Suddenly, every part of the country was plagued poaching, tiger skins and bones supped out from everywhere, and tiger trade was at its peak. It is believed that in the past 10 years 1500 tigers have been killed and Rs. 900 crore earned by poachers. The mystery of the vanishing tigers, therefore, can be solved by the help of forest department, government of India with support from the forest dwellers, researchers and conservationists.