The Elusive Big Cats

The Elusive Big Cats

Tigers have always fascinated me. I prefer them to the so called ‘King of the Jungle. Lions may look majestic but seem to mostly lie around looking bored while their many wives rush about murdering things for lunch. Tigers on the other hand appear sleeker and more formidable and are able to strike fear into everything else living in their territory. Very impressive; yes tigers do it for me, so when the three part programme came up on BBC 1 called ‘The Lost Land of the Tiger’ I was ready on the sofa in front of the TV with my glasses polished.

Sadly my expectations were not fulfilled. It seems that an expedition set off in India to find the tiger which sadly due the population expansion across the whole of Asia, and the decimation caused by poachers, has brought the population of this animal to its knees. They are now so thin on the ground that hardly anyone sees them. The remaining few thousand in existence have moved north to the foothills of the Himalayas.

It must have been quite difficult to make a film about something which people hardly ever see. This did not deter the programme makers. So we were shown lots of library footage of tigers mostly looking worried as well they might, together with statements and maps which were repeated several times even in the same episode. The main theme seemed to me was the investigation of the possibility of forming a corridor so that tigers could move freely along the foothills of the mountains right across the top of India. Bhutan seemed to be the missing link in the chain and was the area under investigation. They would be able to meet other tigers and interbreed with them so as to maintain a more diverse gene pool. All I can say is that I hope the tigers know this. We, the TV viewers, certainly did as it was so often mentioned. I can almost draw the map by memory. First the Indian continent was shown largely coloured red then it dissolved into a spotty mess as the tiger population shrunk.

I was there to see pictures of tigers, but instead I got an account of how a camera woman spent the night in a tree during a thunderstorm. Surely a pointless operation if she intended to film them as no sensible big cat would be abroad in weather like that. Then a bearded scientist discovering the largest dung beetle he had ever seen in an elephant dropping. There was also footage of monkeys hanging precariously in trees scratching as monkeys do. Some people having fun in canoes on a rough piece of water followed footage of villagers playing a sort of primitive game of darts, but no tigers apart from the usual library fillers.

I must say the locals in Bhutan seemed fairly laid back about tigers. The fact that occasionally some of their livestock were found partly eaten by some large cat didn’t seem to bother them. When asked if they felt impelled to go and hunt the culprit down they just shrugged their shoulders and said what is the point. You can’t hunt something you never see.

The next stage of the expedition was to go up into the mountains to find out if there were any visible tigers up there. Had my big moment arrived? Excitement rose to fever pitch as robot cameras were attached to trees to record anything that might pass. I have to say that if I was a tiger I would think twice about venturing into this location. I thought tigers needed jungles full of edible game to survive. Up here all I could see were rocks, tree stumps and expansive mountain views. However when the cameras were checked later, yes there were tigers to be seen; quite a few in fact. Shock and exhilaration from the team! Apparently tigers and mountains were not hitherto known to go together. Later these pictures were analysed back at base. Apparently no two tigers are the same...different stripe patterns. Sadly the tiger numbers dwindled when it was discovered that the cameras had only revealed the same animal in most of the pictures. I went to sleep at this point and did not see the third episode of this particular saga. I felt sure it would have been a repeat of much that I had already seen if the two earlier programmes were anything to go by.

As there are supposed to be only about 5000 to 7000 tigers left world wide of which 2500 to 3750 are in India, how on earth does anyone know? Apparently unless they are more or less confined to small game reserves no one ever sees them. Perhaps they are cleverer than we think and have emigrated and are now even more widespread. Perhaps they have always been like that. Everywhere there are reports of unseen big cats hiding in the countryside. When I was very young I used to hear them roaring at night which was odd as my family lived in suburban Surrey. Even this turned out to be a myth. I later found out that what I heard was my father snoring in his sleep in our front bedroom. Late night dog-walkers used to pause outside our house to listen and wonder how my poor mother could stand the noise.

Alter Mann on WW2

Alter Mann