The death of two tiger cubs on being abandoned by their mother or on being orphaned follows a fairly common template in the wild across various species.
A similar incident was reported from Dattahalli beat of Metikuppe Range in Nagarahole in January 2015, when two tiger cubs were found dead due to starvation and there was no trace of their mother. The third cub was rescued and shifted to the Mysuru zoo for treatment, but it died a few days later.
Leopards abound around Mysuru and they tend to hide their litter in sugarcane fields or shrubs before going to hunt. Invariably, the litter is sighted by farmers or local residents who hand them over to the authorities imagining that the animals have been “rescued”. But rarely have the cubs survived.
Experts say, from the conservation point of view rescuing an individual animal in the wild amounts to interference with nature where the fittest survive and pass on their healthy genes to posterity. Besides, rescuing and shifting the animals to the zoo adds to the pressure on the zoo authorities strapped of funds as their hands are full.
There were suggestions that animals could be monitored and fed but this has no support from any quarter as the animals tend to become dependent, will be unable to hunt on their own, and also lose fear of human contact. A direct fallout of it is shifting closer to human habitation escalating conflict situations on the fringes.
Nagarahole being a high-density tiger area, such incidents will be fairly common in the natural world and hence the focus should be on preventing unnatural death due to poaching and not natural deaths, said a wildlife activist. He said the third cub by now would be so badly emaciated that tranquilising it will also be difficult, while backing the decision of the authorities not to rescue the cubs.
