The tiger being tranquillised, bottom, for the second time for taking off collar (notice the neck and the dart stuck on its hind leg). One of the darted tigers, top left, walks weak and famished. The tiger lies unconscious for a long time after being tranquillised. Photo: TV grab from BBC documentary GangesThose in Bangladesh who argue that the death four years ago of two Sundarbans tigers was due to reckless research have found support for their contention in the findings of an official Indian investigation into the deaths of Panna tigers in Madhya Pradesh.
It is now thought increasingly likely that the deaths four years ago of two Sundarbans tigers were the result of foreign researchers using radio collars as a way of tracking tigers in the forest. The researchers - a university of Minnesota professor James LD Smith and a PhD candidate Adam Barlow - were, at the time, working alongside the forest department as part of the Sundarbans Tiger Project.
The researchers had tranquilised and then collared two tigers one in 2005 and the other in 2006.The first tiger died within six months of radio-collaring. The second one died soon after being tranquilised to remove the collar.
Soon after the tigers had died, Sirajul Hossain and other naturalists began to question the practice of collaring and the use of tranquillisers. He argued that there was evidence that collaring was too risky for wild tigers, and that the tranquilliser Telazol was not recommended as safe for wild tigers.
It was reported that the collars disorientated the tigers and caused them to hallucinate - making it difficult for them to hunt and avoid poachers.
A video made by a BBC TV crew just before their deaths seemed to give support for this view as it showed the tigers very weak and famished. It showed that they could barely move and even wild boars were not afraid to be within a few feet of them.
Following the deaths, the forest department had prohibited putting collars on the tigers. The researchers had initially planned to collar eight tigers.
Although these criticisms were not supported by a number of Indian tiger researchers, support for these claims has now come from last month's findings of the National Wildlife Crime Control Bureau investigation into the deaths of dozens of tigers in the Panna reserve of Madhya Pradesh which had been considered one of the oldest homes for tigers in India.
Like the Sundarbans tigers, the Panna tigers had also been the subject of collaring and the use of tranquillisers.
The Bureau's report found that radio collaring was to blame for the deaths of most of these tigers. It concluded that 80 percent of the tigers killed in Panna had died at the hands of poachers after they were radio-collared. It criticized the lack of standard operating procedures in using radio-collaring and the weight of the heavy collars which caused neck infections. The report also said that the dose of tranquiliser given to the tigers had robbed them of their agility.
Following this revelation, Bangladeshi naturalists are now demanding that the deaths of the two Sundarbans tigers should also be thoroughly investigated.
Naturalist and wildlife photographer Sirajul Hossain points out that both the tigers tranquilised and radio-collared in Bangladesh were residents of the eastern Sundarbans where tourists and fishermen crisscross tigers' path without any incident or abnormal tiger behavior.
“It is interesting that after the tigers were tranquilised, they both showed odd behaviour - perhaps because of the result of hunger and the effect of the drug,” he said.
“They became weak, were unable to hunt, and attacked people, a number of times. In my view the effect of using Telazol and the process of radio collaring may make the Panna tigers vulnerable to poachers."
Ronald Haldar, another naturalist criticized the decision to experiment on an old tiger, and points to discrepancies in the explanations for the deaths given by the researchers. "Why was such an old tiger selected for such a stressful exercise? And why were we told that the collar of the other tiger was found abandoned in the jungle when this was not true," he asks.
Dr Reza Khan, a zoologist, said the tigers must have died from the result of overstress from excessive tranquilisation - which was done not by a vet but by a biologist.
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