Cattle –Eaters and Man Eaters– Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve
Tiger are often maligned for their aberrant behaviour reflected in their lifting cattle sometime killing and eating men. Though such behaviour cannot be tolerated invariably it is disturbance or damage to tiger or its habitat the induces or complete to act in such a manner. As already mentioned the Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve tiger by training and instinct learns to avoid man. However when a lid life habitat is a degraded causing a reduction in the population of natural prey tigers are driven to occasionally taking cattle. This may lead to conflict between man and tiger and there may be situation when while being chased away from a livestock kill a hungry tiger launches and attack on man to prevent such deprivation. A few such instances may embolden a tiger to take to man killing by shooting tiger. Often such attempts only end in wounding or injuring a tiger who partly out vengeance and partly because of its inability to kill free ranging wild prey because of the injury goes for cattle even man.
In a policy statement the government of India has permitted destruction of proven man eaters while providing compensation to owner of the cattle killed. At the same time attempts are under way to rehabilitate habitats for the tiger both in the protected as well as in order to forest areas.