When another tiger was captured near Narni village in Sitapur this week, India celebrated restraint. The headlines said “man-eater caught.” What they didn’t say is that this tiger was the third animal removed in less than a year from the same stretch of forest — and nothing has changed.
Sitapur and the cycle of fear
For weeks, residents of Maholi and Narni lived in panic. A young man had been killed on August 22, and fear quickly turned into blame. Villagers accused the Forest Department of neglect. Patrols intensified, cameras were installed, and yet another tiger appeared — proof that Sitapur’s borders with Pilibhit remain porous, unmanaged, and hostile to coexistence.
Forest officers tranquilized the tiger 300 meters from Narni, a 220-kilogram male about six years old. Once sedated, the animal was caged, trucked to the district headquarters, and paraded before crowds snapping phone flashes. When he regained consciousness, the tiger growled, terrified and cornered. Officials called it a successful rescue. It was containment.
The human-tiger equation
Sitapur lies beside Pilibhit’s degraded forest fringe, a zone repeatedly flagged for conflict. As habitats shrink and corridors vanish, tigers wander into sugarcane and settlements. People respond with fear; the state responds with cages. Three captures in one district within months reveal not random encounters but systemic collapse.
Each time a tiger crosses an invisible line, the same cycle repeats: panic, patrols, and tranquilizer guns. The forest department’s data stops at capture. What follows — relocation, stress, and often death in captivity — is undocumented. Transferred to “safe” facilities like Gorakhpur zoo, the tigers disappear into paperwork. No post-release tracking, no welfare transparency, no learning loop.
Bureaucracy as habit
Dr Dayashankar’s Dudhwa team was again brought in to “neutralize” the situation. A live-bait trap was set 300 meters from Narni. Late that evening, the tiger approached, was darted, collapsed, and hauled away. For the department, another victory. For conservation, another warning. The DFO confirmed two cubs remain unaccounted for, yet surveillance will continue “until villagers feel safe.” That phrase, repeated across India, defines the bias — human comfort over ecological continuity.
The human–tiger conflict here is not accidental. It stems from destroyed corridors and failed coexistence planning, as first reported by Bhaskar English.
The missing accountability
Uttar Pradesh has the budgets, drones, and data to prevent these encounters. What it lacks is coordination and urgency. Conflict mitigation plans are written, shelved, and recycled. Compensation schemes arrive late. Conflict zones like Sitapur should be treated as laboratories of coexistence — rapid-response corridors, education drives, and real-time tracking — yet remain headline generators for “man-eater caught.”
The captured tiger may soon join the tigress seized twenty days earlier in the same area. Both will likely end up in Gorakhpur zoo. The word “rescue” masks a life sentence. Captive animals lose muscle tone, stress easily, and rarely breed naturally. Celebrating such outcomes is hypocrisy dressed as protection.
Lessons ignored
India has models that work. In Maharashtra’s Chandrapur and Madhya Pradesh’s Kanha, community-based early-warning systems cut fatalities drastically. Local guardians patrol buffer zones and alert farmers via SMS before tigers enter cropland. Uttar Pradesh could adapt these methods but chooses bureaucracy over innovation.
Real coexistence requires investing in people who already share the forest — those who can read tracks, interpret alarm calls, and guide officials before crisis strikes. Instead, the state flies in external teams after blood has been spilled. The pattern ensures both sides lose: humans in fear, tigers in cages.
A deliberate failure
Each new capture from Sitapur proves a deeper truth — India’s tiger policy still treats conflict as nuisance management, not landscape management. Removing predators may calm headlines but fractures ecosystems. Until forest governance accepts accountability, the roars we hear from cages are not victories; they are indictments.
As Sitapur’s latest captive waits for clearance, villagers report two cubs still roaming. The department vows continued surveillance. Surveillance is not strategy. Strategy is preventing the next capture. Strategy is reforming forestry laws, linking Pilibhit corridors, and measuring outcomes by tigers thriving free, not tigers sedated in crates.
Until then, Sitapur’s roar will echo through iron bars — a reminder that India still measures success by what it catches, not by what it saves.
Source: Bhaskar English, India
Photo: Bhaskar English, India
