THE LAST TIGER

The last tiger of Laltong Forest Block, seven miles from Siliguri, in north Bengal died on the night of 26 June 1999.


Old age, failing vision and weakening limbs, and an intuition of approaching the final tryst in his life, made him decide to seek peace in human habitat. He had never harmed human beings. After having ruled the sal forest and the grasslands on the banks of Teesta River for several years, he dragged his feeble body to the nearest human dwelling just outside his forest, and lay down near it - exhausted.

That was how the early rays of sun spotted him the following morning; and that was how the cook from the army camp found him blocking his way into the cook-house – for he lay at the door of the cook-house. Soon a crowd of army men collected, watching him silently from a safe distance. The presence of the tiger in the cook-house drew hordes of people from the nearby Sarugarah village. The forest officer was informed. A few hours later, the tiger was transported to Sukna Wildlife Range headquarters in a cage. The tiger did not make any fuss – it lay totally surrendered to the fate at the hand of human beings.

I saw him at Sukna. Now a mere skeleton of a large tiger, draped in a fading pale and striped coat, he must have been an outsized powerful male in his better days. He raised his head and returned my gaze with a tinge of sadness in his eyes. With a sigh, he returned to his supine immobility. He had been put in a large cage, placed in an isolated part of the Range Complex, secluded from the curious visitors. For about a week he was fed and cared for. He passed away peacefully in his sleep.

The forest of Laltong was dense, and teeming with wildlife in early 1970s when I patrolled it as a Divisional Forest Officer. Spotted deer, sambhar, barking deer, wild boar, sloth bear, and tigers lived in it. The sandy expanses of Teesta River were replete with tiger pugmarks. Elephants found Laltong Block as an important site on their seasonal migration route.

By the end of the twentieth century, only elephants were reported to be passing through the forest on their migration days. Sloth bear had not been seen for decades. The forest floor had all its young trees cut and taken away by firewood sellers – it was now a desert under a green canopy of trees. Without browse and grass, the deer were rarely seen in the area. Teesta river bed had been encroached, and confrontations between wild elephants and human beings had become a recurring headache for the forest officers.

The death of the last tiger – who had seen all these changes – brought an end to the spirit of the forest – the spirit that made a forest out of a stand of tall trees; the spirit that said planting trees alone as compensation for diversion of wildlife habitats does not bring back a living forest; the spirit that said no forest is worth calling it a forest if it does not inspire awe and respect in human minds.

With just over 1,000 tigers left in India, isolated small populations of tigers will eventually die out, even if given full protection from poachers. Increasing the number of tiger reserves cannot help. Many tiger reserves have their tigers facing similar threat. In other areas tiger populations are too small to attract formation of new tiger reserves. Unless given special attention under tiger conservation movement – the spirit of India’s forests may not live long.