“A forest is deemed healthy when there is movement of tigers,” said R. Senthil Kumaran, an award-winning wildlife and documentary photographer of Madurai here on Sunday.
He was speaking at an awareness event, ‘Tiger Tales’ held in view of the International Tiger Day in Madurai.
“If there are tigers, there are other animals as well as its prey, followed by availability of water, which ultimately signifies a healthy forest,” he said.
Elaborating on his experiences of documenting tigers over the past 12 years in tiger reserves of Tadoba, Sundarbans, Anamalai etc, Mr Kumaran said that as per the census of 1939, there were 40,000 tigers in India which reduced to 2,000 in 1975.
“There were tigers in Madurai, even in Sivaganga–there are mentions of tigers in novels. The number further reduced to 1,700 before it rose to the current number of 3,000,” said Mr Kumaran. He also noted that the Megamalai Tiger Reserve is the 51st tiger reserve in India.
He said that man-animal conflict has increased in the past 120 years due to landscape changes that took place as mines were created due to urbanisation and globalisation. Due to which around 14,000 primitive tribal families have been relocated out of the 54,000 such families in 50 tiger reserves across the country to protect humans from tigers and vice-versa.
He added and also narrated thrilling experiences of how he documented survivors of tiger attacks with a display of his photographs in a series titled Boundaries: Human-Tiger Conflict.
N. Leelavathi of Chokkikulam said that the way she looks at tigers has completely changed now while P. Abinaya, a professional photographer in the city, believed that black and white wildlife photographs have a hard-hitting impact on the society.
