Dying tiger's attack exposes extent of poaching in India

DELHI - Only a week after India set up a government agency to save its dwindling tiger population, the scale of its task was underlined when poachers shot dead a tiger just a few kilometres from one of the country's premier wildlife parks, the Corbett Tiger reserve.

But, for once, the poachers did not get away. The dying three-metre long tiger attacked one of them and badly mauled him. Inder Singh was fighting for his life in hospital yesterday.

However, local villagers claimed Singh had been injured in an unprovoked tiger attack, and demanded compensation from forestry officials. But amid the unprecedented Government and media scrutiny of India's tiger numbers, wildlife officers decided to carry out an autopsy on the dead tiger and found two home-made rifle bullets.

Police have now filed a case against Singh and two accomplices, who escaped. But the death of another tiger in India has emphasised the scale of the crisis. India is home to the largest population of tigers left in the wild. But there was a scandal last year after it emerged that many of the country's leading reserves had been inflating their tiger numbers to cover up the scale of the poaching problem.

A tiger skin can fetch £10,000 ($28,677) in Tibet, the centre of the world's illegal skin trade. Until now, India's wildlife protection agencies have been underpaid, understaffed and under-resourced - ill-equipped to protect tigers from the often heavily armed poachers.

Until last year, it was believed there were 3600 wild tigers in India. Now conservationists fear there may be only 3000 left in the entire world. India's new National Tiger Conservation Authority is supposed to change that. But critics say it is a watered down version of original proposals for a national agency, and lacks the powers to enforce conservation.

Unlike most tiger killings, which are the work of professional poachers, this week's is believed to have been unplanned. Mr Singh and his accomplices are believed to have dug a pit just 7km from the Corbett reserve to trap wild boar or deer. When they got a tiger instead, they decided to kill it.

But reserve officials refused to confirm if the dead tiger was one of theirs, saying there were tigers living outside the reserve.

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