Thread by @adityadickysin

Let me tell you a sad story from 12 years ago. A story that had a huge impact on me. A story about two tigers that were poisoned on the outskirts of Ranthambhore.

I was called as one of the two independent eye witnesses by the Deputy Field Director of Ranthambhore to follow some ridiculous protocol. If you want details of the event - they are here

dickysingh.com/2010/03/08/two…

How it effected me - One man with accomplices poisoned a goat carcass that two sub adult tigers had killed and then left it for them to eat, which they did two days later. A few hours later they died miserably

I was outraged enough to go gunning for those few culprits. Had we caught them then we would surely have beaten them badly before protecting them. What slimes you kill two beautiful tigers just over a loss of 3 goats that cost Rs 2000 each. For that they killed two tigers

This was some 12 years ago - I wasn’t mature enough to understand it. But it effected me and I though long and hard about it. Today you could call me more mature - so much more that I may even debate in favour of who I then called culprits.

1. These are really poor people living in a remote village with little infra - no schools, electricity, medical help, road etc
2. The owner of the goats was relatively rich there as he had 50 goats @ Rs 2000 each - a big sum of Rs 100,000 of net worth
3. Goats were their lives

If two tigers killed a couple of his goats, he was scared that they will kill more. These two goats were 4% of his net worth. More dead would have been catastrophic for his whole family. He did not approach the system as he knew it was useless from his experience

He should have got compensation of then Rs 400 as wild predators killed his goats but since the deaths happened outside the protected area (less than 500 meters outside) he didn’t. The only solution that he could think of was retaliation and that’s exactly what he did.

Why did he tear ‘so many’ goats. The number of goats around here went up massively around mid 2000s because the prices of goat meat in and around Delhi shot through the roof. Goats became ‘profitable’ (a profit of Rs 500 per goat - buy a car maybe) and were now worth killing for

So he killed to save all that he owned. Ideally he shouldn’t have done that and like a good conservationist led a poorer life. Like almost all villagers living at the edge of wilderness. How dare he dream of upwards mobility? That’s what I thought then

Now that I am mire mature - I am ashamed of what I thought then. Now I realise that we can’t just expect them to pay the price of conservation. Even this man who killed two tigers is far better for wild than an average ‘I am an Eco warrior’ wildlife photographer.

Now I am beginning to understand how the owner of this goat would have thought and to an extent I appreciate his thought process. I went there from a nice home in a Rs 7 00,000 car to judge a man with hungry kids. If my kid was starving, I would have killed anything

Pardon the grammatical mistakes but this thread is not for grammar nazis. It put my life in perspective and changed my understanding of ‘save the tigers’ - a flawed slogan for consumption of those who are most dangerous for tigers