Weekly Feline News

Here are the cat-related news for this week. Hope you all are enjoying your holidays and had a great time these past few days.

The stray bengal tiger in India that has been roaming the countryside in the north for the past month, dodging authorities and making occasional kills to sustain itself, now seems to be in real trouble after news emerged recently that he had finally claimed his first human victim. The body of a boy was recovered on Tuesday, thought to have been killed by the tiger. The tragedy was just waiting to happen as the animal was passing right through human settlements for weeks now, playing hide and seek with wildlife officials. Within hours of the discovery of the boy's remains, state officials proclaimed the tiger to be a man-eater and issued a cash award and shooting orders for the animal. This however has been met with criticism by conservationists and officials from the National Tiger Conservation Authority of India who seek to differentiate a man-eater from a man-killer. It is generally thought that any one of a number of factors could lead to a tiger accidentally killing a human being. However, unless the animal makes deliberate, repetitive kills it is often not classified as a man-eater, rather a man-killer, and thus not destroyed. The decision, therefore, to declare this particular tiger as a man-eater after just one kill maybe a little abrupt and premature according to conservationists. And it seems that the state authorities have realized their error and retracted somewhat from their initial stance. It is now being said that all efforts are being made to trap and capture the animal alive, including adaptation of new strategies and involvement of a new team from the Wildlife Institute of India. However, the shooting orders are still in place and the onus really is on the conservationists and wildlife staff to locate and ensure the safe capture of the animal as soon as possible, before any further tragedy ensues. More on this story here, here and here.

Man-animal conflict is in more news this week. A woman was reportedly killed by a tiger in an eastern town of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. The region is the site of a coal mining project and has witnessed several recent incidents of attacks on humans by big cats, including leopards and tigers. A little to the west, in the district of Jalna - again in Maharashtra, two people were attacked and seriously injured by a tiger when it strayed into a village. The wounded were moved to a health facility where they are reported to be in stable condition now. The two stories are here and here.

Disturbing news obviously. The situation is made more grim by the recent revelation, from a study of government records, that forty eight tigers were lost as a result of poaching in the past six years. Even as this is a relative decline from the critical situation nearly a decade ago - still this is a significant number when the total tiger population in the country is hovering at a little over a thousand individuals. More here. And to obtain further perspective on the overall situation of tiger conservation in the region, here is an interesting article about a recent documentary that takes a comprehensive look at the current situation and suggests measures to save the tigers from extinction.

Good news for tigers in the Southeast though - the Malaysian government has announced that it plans to double the number of its wild tigers. The ambitious project aims to increase the current five hundred Malaysian tigers to one thousand by the year 2020. New security measures and corridors between forests for animal migration will be put in place over the next twelve years. This is the first significant initiative by authorities in Malaysia to preserve their endangered big cats after decades of illegal hunting and logging in the country's jungles. Full report here.

Now to something that's clearly NOT helping the preservation of tigers. Officials in Palm Beach Country, Florida, have arrested a woman over charges of running a fake big cat sanctuary. The charity that goes by the name of 'Rescue: Big Cat Org' is a non-existent entity that claims to house a number of exotic felines. There are even fake stories of the rescue and rehabilitation of several animals on its website. The woman has reportedly admitted to accepting an unspecified amount of money in donations as well through this online scam. The fake charity has nothing to do with the legitimate big cat sanctuary in Tampa, Florida - Big Cat Rescue - that does indeed house rescued wild cats and from whose wonderful blog I obtain many of these cat-related news items. The fake charity has its own website too, by the way, and is still online at rescuebigcatorg.com! Full story on the Planetsave blog.

Now compare that to this site. It is of course legitimate and I don't ask for donations either ;) ...but if you do want to spend some money for a real good cause, you can do that by helping Menelik, the Cheetah cub rescued by Born Free in Ethiopia. You can read the full story of this beautiful little cub here.

And if you want to read another good story - here is one of a brave lioness defending her cubs at Samburu in Kenya, documented by the staff at the Ewaso Lions project in the country's north.

I'll leave you with that for this week - wishing everybody in advance a very Happy New Year - may the new year bring much happiness for people and animals all across the globe :)