BANDHAVGARH AND KANHA, INDIA
TIGER
Tiger, recently voted the world’s most popular animal in a poll on British television, yet a cat that is currently being persecuted, probably to extinction in the wild, is a subject that I have longed to tackle. The tiger is the biggest of the big cats. It has an almost supreme feline look from the tip of its nose through those piercing eyes to the end of its tail. The enormity of expression in its face can change in the split of a split second. The movement in its shoulders and down its spine through to the flick of its tail and the nonchalant and confident way that the tiger ambles through the jungle, all fills the sculptor with an enormous palette of action. Other than that imposing head, the tiger does have an extraordinarily narrow, almost two dimensional appearance when viewed from above or behind, this body flows through the undergrowth giving the chance of an enticing twist to the sculptor.
It is well known that the tiger is under huge pressure. All too often one has met or spoken to people who have ventured to India on the quest to find tiger, going to some of India’s most famous tiger reserves, to come back home disappointed. With this in mind, I was determined to try to find and sculpt the tiger in its environment. A brief telephone call to Northern Ireland produced a highly amusing travelling companion, namely my best man Danny Kinahan.
In preparation for the safari, I had been well advised by Julian Matthews of Discovery Initiatives. Julian is very experienced in travel to India and has many of the right contacts at his fingertips. He, along with Joanna van Gruisen a wildlife photographer of some repute, advised me to travel to Madhya Pradesh, to visit two of India’s finest tiger reserves; Bandhavgarh and Kanha. I was given a most efficient and essential guide called Raj Singh who met us on our arrival at Bandhavgarh. Under Raj’s guidance we had the most extraordinary amount of success in a remarkably short time. Pug marks were sighted and the sound of the langur monkey and samba deer led us towards what was surely a tiger. We came across a crowd of gypsy jeeps, an elephant or two with their mahouts and a queue of people hoping to take an elephant ride to where a tiger was lying up. Once most people had left, we took cameras, sketch books, plasticine and wire and climbed aboard the elephant, not really believing we could possibly be about to see a wild tiger so soon after our arrival. But sure enough, not too deep into the Sal forest, there lay a mother, two cubs and what we assumed to be the father of the cubs. I could not believe my luck and I set forth immediately to sculpt a tiger, discovering the delights of working from the back of an elephant!
The next few days were filled with similar adventures. The sights and sounds of the jungle, the deep chill of early morning starts, wild boar, chital deer, a feeling of being in Rudyard Kipling country and enormously satisfying days which invariably ended with another delicious curry. Danny was asked by a visitor how long we had been in Bandhavgarh, to which he replied very matter of factly; "nine curries!"
We travelled south to the famous Kanha National Park, wonderful bamboo and Sal forests and early morning steam rising from the water courses. Here again under Raj’s guidance we saw, both from elephant and from the jeep, several magnificent tiger and also wonderful bird life. By now I had made several field studies of tiger, chital, langur monkey and even elephant. Although we had met people who had had considerably less luck than us, we could have left these parks and flown home under the misapprehension that there is no great problem with tiger populations in the Sub-Continent. I had seen, over two weeks, fourteen different tiger.
In the Indian press however, I read the horrifying news that the Sariska Tiger Reserve was officially deemed to have lost its entire tiger population to poachers. Also, the world famous Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve had recently had twenty one tiger poached. This was dramatic news, not least as it came from an admission by the Government who are renowned for keeping their heads in the sand over the plight of the tiger. We travelled from Kanha to Delhi where I had arranged to wine and dine with Joanna van Gruisen and her husband Raghu Chundawat, the eminent tiger biologist, who has spent many years studying the tiger in the Panna Reserve. It was from them that I learned the true horror about the scale of the poaching of big cats in the Sub-Continent. I was shown a film taken in Tibet by two charities; the Environmental Investigation Agency and the Wildlife Protection Society of India. It showed an astounding number of tiger, leopard and otter skins smuggled from India.
The skins are openly for sale, often as Tibetan costumes called chubas. Lhasa, the capital of Tibet Autonomous Region and the streets of Linxia seem to be the central markets for these unfortunate animals. The skin chubas are worn by Tibetan people mainly from Kham at their festivals, both in Tibet and the adjoining Sichuan. There seems to be a complete lack of respect towards wildlife, combined with an influx of wealth, funds gained largely from the recently increased sale of a local caterpillar fungus which is used in oriental medicine. Amongst the numerous skins was found over thirty snow leopard skins taken from both China and India. It would appear that the vast majority of poaching is carried out with both poison and tiger traps not unlike the gin-trap of old.
In the case of the tiger and the leopard in the parks of India, the problem is exacerbated by a lack of political will and a highly over bureaucratic Ministry of Environment and Forests. This umbrella organisation cannot possibly provide the clout to preserve the tiger’s jungle effectively because its remit is too large and has conflicting demands put upon it. There is no specific Ministry of Wildlife which would look after the interests of the tiger above all else. At fifty years old, the average age of a forest guard is too high and they are armed at best with old fashioned rifles, but much more usually with sticks. They are not equipped to oppose the modern poaching organisations that have all the latest gear; satellite navigation, high velocity rifles and high tech communications. The more one hears, the more one realises that the plight of the tiger in the wild has reached a critical stage. It has indeed been said that its survival in the wild at the current rate of depletion is impossible. It is equally awful to know that there are more tiger in North American collections, both in zoos and in private hands than there are in the wild in India. It fills me with sadness that I might not be able to return to India to sculpt the tiger in the wild. If the wild tiger is lost to India, India will have lost the jewel in her crown and those both responsible for its protection and its destruction should hang their heads in shame on the world’s stage.
