Wild life in the village: an appeal, from Indian Wild Life, vol. I, no. 2:1936

It was a small village of some 16 ploughs differing in no respect from hundreds of similar villages, scattered throughout the length of the tract along the Bhahar. Originally the village had been surrounded by tree jungle intercepted with grass, and in this virgin jungle lived all the numerous denizens of the wild. To protect their crops the villagers erected thorn fences round their fields. As an additional safeguard a member of the depressed class was encouraged to settle in the village whose duty it was to watch the crops at night and see they were not damaged by stray cattle or wild animals. Owing to the abundance of game tigers did not interfere with the village cattle and I cannot remember a single case of cow or bullock having been killed by a tiger. In the course of time, a great change took place not only in the villagers themselves but also in the jungle surrounding the village. Hindus who formerly looked upon the taking of life against their religious principles were now clamouring for gun licences and were competing with each other in the indiscriminate slaughter of game. As profits from the sale of game increased field work was neglected and land began to go out of cultivation. Simultaneously, lantana, introduced into Haldwani as a pot plant, started to kill out the grass and basonta until the village was surrounded with a dense growth of this obnoxious weed. Government now stepped in and at great expense built a pucca wall all round the village. The building of this wall freed the villagers from the necessity of erecting fences and watching their crops and gave them more time to devote to the killing of game. This heavy and unrestricted shooting of deer had the inevitable consequence of disturbing the balance in nature with the result that tigers and leopards, that had hitherto lived on game, were now forced to live on the village cattle. One morning in May of the present year (1931 or 1932) I arrived in the village and pitched my tent in a little clearing just outside the cultivated land. News of my arrival soon spread through the village and in a short time a dozen men were squatting in front of my tent. One and all had the same tale to tell. A tiger had taken up its quarters in the lantana and in the course of two years, had killed 150 head of cattle and unless it was destroyed, the village would have to be abandoned. While the men were pouring out their tale of woe I observed a pair of vultures circling low over a narrow stretched of lantana running between the village wall and the public road. The two vultures were soon joined by others; so picking up a rifle I set off to investigate. Progress through the lantana was difficult but with the aid of a good hunting knife a way was eventually cut and the remains of a horse killed the previous day found. There were plenty of pug marks round the kill, little of which remained, and it was easy to locate the tiger from his low continuous growling but impossible to see him in the dense cover. Returning to the road which was only 40 yards from the kill and little used at this time of the year, I concealed myself behind a bush in the hope that the tiger would follow me to see if I had left the locality, quite a natural thing for it to do. Half an hour later the tiger walked out on to the road and gave me an easy shot as he stood facing me. That evening after I had skinned the tiger – he was a very old animal and I took four old bullets and nine pellets of buck – shot out of him – I called the villagers together and made an appeal to them on behalf of the few remaining deer in the jungle. On the opposite side of the village from my camp, irrigation water had been allowed to flow into the jungle. Over this water machans had been built in the tress and in these machans man sat through the heat of the day, and all night on moon-lit nights, and shot down animals that came to drink. There was no other water within miles and if a thirst-maddened animal avoided one machan, it fell victim to the man in the next. I told the villagers that God had given water free for all, and that it was a shameful thing for a man to sit over the water God gad provided and shoot His creatures when they came to drink. To do this was to lower themselves below a corpse-eating hyaena, for even he, the lowest of all creation, did not lie in wait to kill defenceless animals while they were drinking. The men listened to me in silence and when I had done, said they had not looked at the matter in this light, and they promised that they would take down the machans they had erected and in future would not molest the animals that came to the vicinity of the village to drink. I stayed in the locality several weeks, taking bird and animal pictures, and am glad to say the men kept their promise. I believe that much of the slaughter of deer that is daily taking place throughout the length and breadth of the Bhabar and Terai would cease if an appeal was made to the better feelings of men. I do not exaggerate the damage that is being done to our fauna by shooting over water.

From Carpet Sahib, A life of Jim Corbett, by Martin Booth.