[FEL-L] tigers in India

[Gary Breuckman]

(11-09) 04:00 PST Bandhavgarh National Park, India -- In a flash the news
was all over the jungle: A tiger was afoot.

The langur monkeys spotted it from their treetop sentry posts, and their
coughing, guttural alarm was relayed on the ground by the large, elk-like
deer called sambars. Their tiger warning - a throaty bleating - was in turn
passed on by the yelp of the spotted deer known as chitals.

Throughout the forest creatures froze in place, eyes widened, ears perked,
nostrils flared. In our open jeep, chatter stopped and binoculars and
long-lens cameras rose into place.

At first, nothing. Then, just barely visible, a great, muscular wraith
creeping through the tangled undergrowth. Its stripes rendered it nearly
undetectable; it made no sound.

"If you can hear it walking," whispered our guide and spotter, Jagat
Narayan, "it's not a tiger."

We stood motionless, holding our breath, fingers poised on shutters,
collectively willing it to step into the open. And then, to the dismay of
those of us in the jeep and the profound relief of every other sentient
being in this corner of Bandhavgarh National Park, the tiger turned and
vanished as phantom-like as it arrived.

It used to be much easier to see a wild Bengal tiger in India. At the turn
of the 20th century, when Rudyard Kipling wrote "The Jungle Book," between
40,000 and 50,000 of them roamed the countryside, so many that maharajas
hunted them from custom-built Rolls-Royces. One man alone, the Maharaja of
Surguja, claimed to have killed 1,150.

India banned tiger hunting in 1970, but since then poachers have been
slaughtering what tigers the maharajas left behind, snaring or poisoning or
even electrocuting them to supply the newly affluent Chinese with the tiger
fur, tiger bones, tiger whiskers, tiger hearts, tiger eyeballs, tiger gall
bladders and tiger penises used in traditional medicine (see sidebar.)

Today no one is sure how many wild tigers remain in India, but most
estimates put the total at only 3,000 to 3,500. Some believe it's closer to
1,500. Whatever the count, most experts believe India has about half the
world's wild tiger population.

But seven of the country's 28 tiger reserves barely sustain a breeding
population, and in one, the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, a three-hour
drive from Delhi, no one has seen a tiger since 2004. Wildlife experts
believe poachers killed the preserve's entire population.

If I ever wanted to see a tiger in the wild, I realized, I'd better not put
it off.

I turned to an old friend, Brian Weirum, a trekking leader and waiter at
Insalata's in Marin County who has devoted much of his life to saving the
tigers of India and Nepal. I got a measure of his passion one morning in
India when a game warden, a devout Hindu with a long white beard, wished him
blessings. The man gestured to the sky and said, "God."

"God and tiger are the same," replied Weirum. "To look into the face of the
tiger is to look into the face of God."

>From his home in Woodacre, Weirum, 64, runs the Fund for the Tiger, a
nonprofit organization that over the last 12 years has raised $278,000 to
fund anti-poaching operations, tiger monitoring programs and other tiger
protection initiatives in India and Nepal.

One of his major fundraisers is the 15-day "Save the Tiger" benefit trip he
leads to the two countries each spring in conjunction with Mountain Travel
Sobek. Earlier this year I tagged along on the India segment of the trip.

Man vs. tiger

In Delhi, we met Belinda Wright, a gutsy and indefatigable defender of the
tiger, a whirlwind of a woman who brings to mind the phrase "a force of
nature." Much of the money Weirum raises helps fund her work.

A former National Geographic photographer, Wright, 54, founded the Wildlife
Protection Society of India and regularly risks her life by going undercover
to try to break up the Asian trade in smuggled tiger parts. I listened as
she filled Weirum in on more than a dozen projects and initiatives she has
going simultaneously. Wright gives the impression that there isn't much time
left.

The tiger, she told me, "is slipping through India's fingers."

"The biggest problem right now? Corruption. It's throughout the society,
just everywhere," Wright said. "I just have to look for pockets of honesty.
I've found some courageous game officials, but they often get sacked."

The following evening we boarded the Kalinga Utal Express, an overnight
train that took us 400 miles south to Bandhavgarh National Park. East of
Bhopal in the state of Madhya Pradesh, it is in the region that inspired
"The Jungle Book."

The former hunting reserve of the Maharaja of Rewa, Bandhavgarh is said to
have the highest concentration of tigers in India, about 40 in the
40-square-mile "core area" and the surrounding 170-square-mile buffer zone.

The reserve has two other distinctions: It is the source of the
near-legendary white tiger, of Siegfried and Roy fame. All of the world's
white tigers are descended from a single cub found here in 1951, named
Mohan. The unusual color is the result not of albinism but of inbreeding.

Bandhavgarh was also home to the most celebrated wild tiger of them all -
Sita, the majestic tigress featured on the cover of National Geographic, in
the book "The Year of the Tiger" and in several BBC documentaries.

Named for a beloved Hindu goddess said to be the perfect mother, Sita was
the matriarch of Bandhavgarh, a fertile and productive female largely
responsible for the reserve's healthy tiger population. In her 17 years she
produced six litters with a total of 18 cubs, and a high percentage of the
tigers in the park today are her progeny.

One day in 1999, less than a year after appearing on the National Geographic
cover, Sita simply vanished. The poacher who killed her made somewhere
between $250 and $1,000.

Sudden traffic jam

Our group of 11 stepped off the train in the pre-dawn darkness, checked into
the Tiger Den, a tidy, hacienda-style lodge just outside the park, dropped
our duffels in our rooms and immediately piled into jeeps to go look for
tigers.

Wildlife viewing is always a gamble, and there was no guarantee we'd
actually lay eyes on the rare and secretive beast we'd journeyed halfway
around the world to see. Weirum did his best to manage expectations, but
there were clearly going to be some unhappy campers in the group if we went
home empty-handed. As it turned out, this was not a problem at Bandhavgarh.

I quickly learned to stick close to Narayan, a remarkably knowledgeable and
perceptive naturalist. By watching him, I began to recognize the
tiger-warning calls of the various jungle creatures, and to learn to
triangulate them to determine a tiger's general location and direction of
movement.

I also tried to ride in the jeep with Darrel Roddenberry, a retired Marine
Corps Special Operations sharpshooter with an almost freakish ability to
glimpse well-camouflaged tigers, and to direct my eyes to them.

We saw tigers on each of our three days in the reserve, some only fleetingly
or half-hidden in the tall grass, some out in the open and startlingly
close.

Two of the sightings stand out.

One afternoon we were driving through the park when Narayan suddenly told
the driver to hit the brakes. Even without binoculars we could see a young
male tiger sauntering through the bamboo on the side of the road. As we
waited for it to step out into the open, another jeep pulled up, then
another and another and another.

The tiger approached the road, and the arriving jeeps screeched and lurched
wildly, trying to maneuver for the best view. None of the drivers or guides
wanted to be the one whose clients didn't get a good look.

The tiger wanted to cross the road, but couldn't find a path through the
traffic jam. As drivers shouted at each other to back up, the tiger finally
went around the jeeps and sprinted away, clearly eager to escape the
madness.

Carnivore's meal

If that scene bordered on the ridiculous, the other was a moment of awe and
wonder that will stay with me the rest of my life.

One morning word went around Bandhavgarh that a tiger had been spotted with
a kill, far off the road, and the wardens were summoning their elephants to
take us there.

We waited in a meadow called Chakhadhara, and when it was our turn a
smallish Asian elephant was led over to our jeep. I scrambled up onto the
howdah, the platform on its back, with another trip participant, Corry
Mehigan, the building manager for San Francisco City Hall.

Lurching and swaying atop the kindly beast, we set off into the jungle. The
driver, called a mahout, steered by tapping the elephant on its head with
his bare feet. He motioned for us to be silent. The only sounds were the
creaking of the leather harness and the crunching of leaves underfoot as the
elephant plodded through a tangled forest of sal trees, stepping over logs
and pushing through leafy branches that thwapped us in the face.

Then, among some rocks, we saw the kill - a crimson, dismembered chital that
looked like a child's toy with the stuffing pulled out. The elephant halted,
and there, above the kill, on a ledge at eye level with us, only 15 feet
away, was the tiger.

Sated from his meal, he reclined on his side, panting, head up, blinking
drowsily at us. I got the feeling we were interrupting his siesta.

As we stared, mouths agape, the tiger turned his head slowly and
deliberately and made eye contact with each of us. It is said that tigers
don't recognize the strange-looking cargo on the backs of elephants as
humans, but whatever he thought of us, he knew we were there.

The grandson of Sita, the tiger was about 27 months old and known as the
Chakhadhara male. He was just learning to hunt for himself, and looked to be
quite successful - he was certainly well fed.

The elephant shifted its feet nervously; I gathered we were a bit closer
than it preferred. The tiger could have been upon us easily in a single
leap.

Yawning luxuriously, the Chakhadhara male showed off white incisors the size
of ice picks. He watched us watching him, more with bemusement than malice,
displaying his grandmother's regal bearing. There were no other elephants
around; we had been granted a rare private audience with royalty.

The mahout turned the elephant so we each got a good look. Then, after only
three minutes, it was time to head back. As we crunched back through the
jungle I swiveled around for one last glimpse. The Chakhadhara male still
held us in his steady gaze.

>From that moment my life was cleanly divided into two parts: Before I saw
the tiger, and after.

If you go

Getting there

There are currently no nonstop flights from San Francisco to Delhi, India.
Cathay Pacific, British Airways, United and other carriers fly the route
with one connection. It's roughly the same amount of time flying east,
through Europe, or west, across the Pacific.

"Save the Tiger" trip

The 15-day trip to India's Bandhavgarh National Park and Nepal's Chitwan
National Park departs March 9, 2008. Cost is $4,795 (with 10 to 15
participants) plus $365 internal airfare. Does not include airfare to India.
Participants are asked to make a separate, tax-deductible $300 donation to
the Fund for the Tiger, which is matched by the outfitter, Mountain Travel
Sobek, (888) 687-6235, www.mtsobek.com.

Other tiger tours

A number of adventure travel companies run trips to India and/or Nepal
featuring tiger viewing. Among them: The Adventure Center, (800) 228-8747,
www.adventurecenter.com; Geographic Expeditions, (800) 777-8183,
www.geoex.com; Wilderness Travel, (800) 368-2794, www.wildernesstravel.com.

For more information

Fund for the Tiger, www.thefundforthetiger.org. Donations also accepted at
P.O. Box 2, Woodacre, CA 94973.