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Tuesday, May 17, 2005

The Fate of India's National Animal

India Today has a report on "The Missing Tigers" of India's wildlife sanctuaries. Illegal Poaching has depleted Sariska (200 Km off Delhi), India's premier tiger reserve, of its most famous denizen. The tigers have been hunted down (of course, with the help of the local Forestry department and associated government officials. It would be naive to expect otherwise!) for their skins and there are almost no tigers in this reserve now.
There is something nauseating and gruesome about the cold-blooded killing a magnificent beast for the aesthetic value of its skin. The poachers set an iron and steel trap. The tiger unfortunate enough to get caught in it suffers for hours in agony. Then the poacher comes and shoots the tiger through its heart, spills its guts, scrapes the flesh off its skin and bones and takes home his prize. What was once a living, breathing animal is now worth Rs. 8.6 lakhs....

Reminded of Kannadasan's lyrics,

"Paayum puliyin kodumaiyai iraivan paarvaiyil Vaithane..
Indha paazhum manithan kodumaiyai idhaya porvaiyil maraithane.."

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

411 tigers have been killed in 5 years..

irukaradhe oru 500 dhan pulike indha kodumaya...Kali kalam.

-vv

P B said...

@vv
enna da vijaykath mathiri numbera sollura...

even if they are not hunted down, most of the wild life will go extinct because of forests being wiped away. The ecology cycle is such, killing any animal is equivalent to killing your ownself. Do you know, killing of tigers causes water scarcity?

Anonymous said...

AyyAho ! Entha Kodumaiyai KetTeergala!

Sari Subha, Un Puli dress-a pathi ezhutha MaranThitta ! Adhaiyum pathi ezhuthirkalam ! :))

~Vasu

The Doodler said...

VV, super stats finger tips la vechirukeenga..:)
PB, I guess killing of Tigers causes an imbalance in the ecosystem. More wildlife around without their natural predators -> more consumption of water-> Water scarcity?!! This is a wild shot...:)

The Doodler said...

Vasu,
Tigress dress pathi thani blog potturuven..:)
Subramoni,
A rough translation of those lyrics is as follows:
God placed the cruelty of a tiger in its sharp eyes
But he has hidden man's cruelty under a cover of geniality...

I know RS might do a better job of this..:)

Anonymous said...

Alas, all we can do is maintain statistics about remaining tigers, feel sad about their dwindling numbers and curse those response for all this...Is something being done in our corrupt India to stop this and most importantly is there anything at all we can do to save them?

KP.

F e r r a r i said...

There is a book called 'Omnibus' written by Jim Corbett. Check it out!

P B said...

nalla guess..but herbivorous animals without predators graze more, which results in reduction of under ground water level (grasses help in maintaining). Anways, it is not just tigers that go extinct. As I mentioned once several bird species go extinct becuase of chemical manures used.

Kay said...

Poonai pet'aaa vararkanumnu pesikittu irunthe, ippo neee pora pokka paartha oru puliya eduthu valarpe pol iruke :))

Narayanan Venkitu said...

Kannadasan is God to me.!

By the way, we are losing a lot of species in India. Tiger is the latest. Sad..but true..!

I remember a Hindu article on a bird called 'Lark'...I remember a decade back those birds ...one had dark shade around its eyes and the other was just plain, used to build nests in a clock in my house (Chittu Kurivi). I felt like crying when I read in that article that those bird species have vanished.!!

The Doodler said...

ferrari, will check out that book. Thanks!
Kay, poonai, puli ellam ore cat family dhaane..munnadi small cats valathundu irundhen..ippo big cats-ku graduation...:)
Venkitu sir, I've heard people talk about Chittu Kuruvi being extinct..but I thought even some 5-6 years back, it was around?! My grandma's house used to have nests built by these larks..

The Doodler said...

BTW, people, did anyone guess what song those lyrics belong to?

P B said...

poium poium manadhanku indha buthiyai kuduthane..

Arvind Srinivasan said...

True enough !...apparently God has decided to balance the reduction in population of tigers with their 'human' counterpart (pun intended)...

wish that was reversed !

;)
Arvind

Anonymous said...

Subha,

That is sad state of affairs - Remember Salman's Poachin episode a few years back ? He walked away scot free. The truth is : people are losin out on that magical bond with the other species... where it is going to lead us all to ?! Too scary a thought !


pOyum pOyum manidhanukindha
buthiyai koduthaanE - iRaivan
buthiyai koduthaanE - athil
poiyum puRattum thiruttum kalandhu
boomiyai keduthaanE - manithan
boomiyai keduthaanE...

The Doodler said...

PB and Satheesh,
you guessed right...:) Satheesh, yeah, i remember Salman's poaching episode..well, there's not much to say about that guy. He treats humans the same way too..I think he ran over some pavement dwellers sometime back.

Zeppelin said...

subha,

good to see this blog.... only yesterday i wrote about having a pet tiger...

Maneka Gandhi kooda sera poriya ? :)

ak

Anonymous said...

@Subha,
Yep rite, I remember that episode too. Very bad. As you say nothin more to say 'bout Salman. :(

We yall gotta grow some love within us towards animals in general.

@Zep,

Menaka Gandhi-aa ...che che.. Subha oru Pamela Anderson range-la think panni kittu irukaa ! :)

Zeppelin said...

@ sats,

hmmm... interesting line of thought..

Subha, paathuttu summa irukkiye.... ?? "Narayana Narayana..." :)

Prashanth said...

hey
u know what there s been a report that said there s been an increase in tigers esp in Gujurat...and to think they kill tigers like hobbes makes me sad...

Anonymous said...

hi...nice blog here....and killing tigers is so sad....!