{"id":65451,"date":"2009-11-25T11:34:59","date_gmt":"2009-11-25T11:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/actualites\/2009\/11\/25\/encountering-indias-tiger-king-of-the-jungle\/"},"modified":"2009-11-25T11:34:59","modified_gmt":"2009-11-25T11:34:59","slug":"encountering-indias-tiger-king-of-the-jungle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/news\/2009\/11\/25\/encountering-indias-tiger-king-of-the-jungle\/","title":{"rendered":"Encountering India’s Tiger, King of the Jungle"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is always a tremendous pleasure to visit India’s principal reserves, notably the wild expanses<\/a> of Bandhavgarh<\/em><\/a> and Ranthambore<\/em><\/a>, kingdoms of that magnificent striped cat, the tiger.<\/p>\n

An essential national symbol, the tiger is omnipresent in Indian culture. No other culture in the world has developed such a relationship with nature and animals \u2014 to the point that India’s first nature reserves date back to the 4th century BC, under Emperor Ashoka. As the quintessential hunting animal and thus the reference symbol for the warrior caste, the tiger evokes energy, power and ferocity, but also, in Buddhist tradition, faith and spiritual effort.<\/p>\n

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Safari in Ranthambore, India \u00a9 Shutterstock \/ Etendues Sauvages<\/p><\/div>\n

The fascination this animal exerts \u2014 an enigmatic beast, both frightening and sublime \u2014 is paradoxically one of the main reasons behind the intensive hunting that decimated the species. From over 40,000 individuals in India a century ago, numbers dropped to fewer than 2,000 before Indira Gandhi established the first Project Tiger, declaring the species protected in 1973. At the time, the Ministry of Environment stated that \u201cthe tiger is a symbol of wildlife and of a well-functioning ecosystem, so saving it is crucial to the survival of man.\u201d While India’s official count today puts the figure at just over 1,500 individuals, some conservation organisations are more alarmist, citing a figure as low as 800 tigers.<\/p>\n

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Manuha Kothi Bandhavgarh, India \u00a9 &Beyond<\/p><\/div>\n

Population growth, massive industrialisation and intensive agriculture are all factors that make the ongoing protection of the tiger a delicate matter. Animals extend their territory to survive, while villagers push further into the forest to meet the needs of a growing population. Yet this territory has historically and culturally been shared between man and nature. From an Indian perspective, this is less a problem of human overpopulation than one of defining space jointly occupied by man and tiger.<\/p>\n

Let us hope that in the years to come, a redefinition of a new Project Tiger will be studied, and that solutions taking a more holistic view of this issue will be developed and approved by all communities involved.<\/p>\n

For the good of the tiger, and the benefit of all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is always a tremendous pleasure to visit India’s principal reserves, notably the wild expanses of Bandhavgarh and Ranthambore, kingdoms of that magnificent striped cat, the tiger. An essential national symbol, the tiger is omnipresent in Indian culture. No other culture in the world has developed such a relationship with nature and animals \u2014 to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":64751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[2830,2385,2831,2386],"class_list":["post-65451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india","tag-bandhavgarh","tag-inde","tag-ranthambore","tag-tigre"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}