Further update on stray tigers.

The followers must be wondering why I have changed the headline of my blog post from case of a stray tiger to tigers.During the time gone by after my last post the scenario in the jungles of Uttar pradesh has witnessed the trend of tigers increasingly heading from the confines of protected forests to nearby inhabited areas.The cases of stray Tigers have been reported from four places including Barabanki the case I have already reported on the other Districts are Ghazipur,Lakhimpur near Dudhwa and latest being Sitapur where the tiger was spotted yesterday and he seriously injured a man there. In my view this are both negative and positive developments.
During the last few days reports related to straying Tigers have unnerved coservationists and Wildlife lovers alike and various theories and speculations are floating around in all the Media spheres.
Some views I have come across relate to the rapid pace of human encroachments around the parks and sanctuaries of Uttar Pradesh,what is needed is creation of actual buffer zones between the parks and sanctuaries and human habitation around them.As with the growth of human population there comes the problem of livestock population also growing in the area.This leads to the livestock grazing in the forest area and buffer zone which leads to depletion of the food for the herbivores of the forest which is a natural prey of the Tigers.Also the livestock becomes an easy prey for the Tigers who wander into the populated areas to prey on them.
Most of the Tiger areas in UP are located near the sugarcane farming areas and when the crop is ripe Tiger mistake it as an extension of the forest and sometimes seek refuge in them.
Their seeking refuge in this fields lead to cofrontation between the the animal and humans as sometimes they treat the trespasser humans as intruders in their territory and maim and kill them,fortunately none of the tigers have shown the traits of being maneaters although they have killed and maimed humans but have not become habitual offenders.
Because of this the authoriies are still concentrating their efforts on capturing them alive as they do believe that senseless killing of Tigers will only harm their cause and will lead to unwanted controversies which no one wants to invite.

Now at the end I see a silverlining in this whole episode which a few conservationists have been underlining that is a phenomenonal increase in the population of Tigers in the jungles of UP which might have lead to increase in the young Tiger population in jungles and subsequently might have forced the young adults to seek new areas after they were driven out by mature adults to seek new areas of domain.

I am still of the opinion which I have spoken about earlier that Tigers need a homeland of theirs to survive naturally and needs a strong initiatives and measures to ensure their survival even if it involves a strong and unpopular initiatives and decisions to be taken.Here the onus rests on the shoulders of political leadership to give leadership on this issue.