Tiger on the trail

DID YOU know a tigress does not allow its male cubs to feed on the spoils of its kill once they are 18 months old and the female cubs too get pushed out the same way once they are two?

Strange and true, says Mr. Bittu Sahgal, Environmentalist and Editor Sanctuary Asia Magazine. With such moves, the cat family makes sure that the males leave the pack and females follow suit after a further six month period of nursing.

These are the amazing but effective ways of the wild. The result: no in-breeding, but more nuclear families of its tribe, he said while kick-starting a teacher's workshop on `Kids for Tigers' Programme at the CPR Environmental Education Centre.

The programme appears to have reversed the old cliche `live and let live' while relating to the cat family. It's now `let live to live' for the survival of the generations to come as the tigers' survival is linked to that of the human race as well.

Choosing to equip children from classes three to eight, the managers aim at `recruiting' an informed 1.5 million green tiger army of Indian children to carry their flag in about three years from now. ``To save the tiger, its wild habitat needs to be protected. By protecting forests, the catchment areas of rivers and lakes are protected and thus by saving the tiger, we save ourselves,'' he says.

There is a ready answer for the tiger-ecology tie-up for environment protection. At a recent children's quiz in Alaska, it was the cat family which scored over the polar bear as being the most popular, they point out, not to speak of the Sanctuary Britannia Tiger programme's record of submitting one million signatures of children in support of tigers to the Prime Minister, during 1999-2000.

Other issues of interest are pointers to gauge the `health' of forest cover. The presence of the great Indian bustard is an indicator of the `general health' of grassland and the grazing of the Nilgiri Tahr is often thought to symbolise the green available on hilly terrains.

The teachers of about 40 city schools gathered for the programme had interesting details to narrate back at school. An elephant drinks about 200 litres of water a day and a tiger consumes 13.5 kg of food a day. Poachers kill one tiger a day in India on average, where the cat population is about 4000 of which half live in sanctuaries. Mr. Noel de Sa, Sanctuary Asia coordinator, furnishing details, assured teachers that the programme was flexible and it was being implemented in metropolitan cities, besides Nagpur, Patna, Jabalpur and Dehradun.

There is a contest too for the massive tiger army. Four among them will fly to U.K. and present the viewpoints of the Indian children, besides the certificates, scholarships and prizes.

By S. Shanker

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