India's human population and its economy have been rapidly growing as well, steadily filling in rural areas with farms, roads and mushrooming towns like Pandharkawada. Many tigers are now running out of space, and clashing more with humans.
They are spilling out of their dedicated reserves, roaming along smooth new asphalt highways and skulking through crowded farmland on a search for territory, mates and prey — such as antelope, wild pigs, stray cattle and sometimes people.
All across India, islands of forest are shrinking, and the thin green tendrils on the map — tiger corridors — are being cut by more roads and more farms. Each tiger, meanwhile, needs miles of thick forest; the size of its territory depends on the availability of prey. In the past decade, India has created nearly two dozen more tiger reserves, but many of them are surrounded by human development on all sides.
The trouble this time began Wednesday afternoon in the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve, about 320km east of New Delhi, said Vaibhav Srivastava, Pilibhit's district magistrate.
The tiger, a 5- to 6-year-old female, attacked a man who had entered the reserve to fish in a stream. Villagers who were working in rice paddies nearby tried to chase away the tiger, and in the ensuing battle, another eight people were injured, one of whom later died, Srivastava said.
Several dozen men quickly formed a posse intent on killing the tiger, forestry officials said.
When a small contingent of forest rangers tried to calm things down, the villagers roughed them up and snatched a mobile phone to stop them from calling for backup. The rangers were armed only with wooden sticks and were vastly outnumbered, said H. Rajamohan, the tiger reserve's field director.
When senior forestry officials tried to reach the area, villagers blocked them and attacked their cars.
As they did so, others closed in on the tiger.
According to Rajamohan, someone speared the tiger, and as it lay on its back, thrashing in the grass, villagers began to rain down blows from sticks and machetes.
"Kill! Kill!" several shouted as they pulled bamboo poles high over their heads and smashed the tiger in the face and body.
Rajamohan said the tiger crawled into the jungle, where the mob continued to beat it. Several hours later, the tiger died. Practically every part of its body was badly injured, including a broken jaw and many cracked ribs.
India takes tiger killings seriously. Some are investigated like homicides. Authorities in the Pilibhit area said they had closely studied the video of the killing, identifying 30 suspects, with at least four arrested.
"It's a very outrageous incident," Rajamohan said.
He said this was not a spontaneous outburst of violence.
"This was well planned," he said.
The penalty in India for killing a tiger can be more than three years in jail.
Less than a year ago in another tiger reserve not far from Pilibhit, villagers intentionally ran over a tiger with a tractor, killing it.
And for more than two years an especially crafty female tiger, whom authorities had named T-1, stalked the hills of central India, suspected of killing at least 13 people. Last fall, forestry officials launched a military-style operation, deploying drones, thermal cameras, hundreds of officers and veterinarian sharpshooters mounted on the backs of elephants, to tranquilise the tiger. After they failed, a sharpshooter took T-1 out with a bullet.
"People are becoming less tolerant'' of tigers, said Bilal Habib, an ecology professor and tiger researcher.
"Everybody is pained,'' he said.
But, he added, the onus is on humans to find ways for tigers to survive in an increasingly crowded world.
Written by: Jeffrey Gettleman and Hari Kumar
Photographs by: Bryan Denton
© 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES
