No Beast So Fierce

by Dane Huckelbridge

  Certainly not as prime tiger habitat. Beyond the boundaries of the hunting reserves, tigers were nothing but a threat to the Nepalese government’s new spirit of economic progress and productivity—a relic of the old Nepal rather than a harbinger of the new. They killed cattle, they frightened loggers and migrant laborers—essentially, they served no useful purpose whatsoever once outside the verdant limits of a royal park. And whereas the Shahs of yore might have relied on a local Tharu shaman to keep his village spiritually balanced and safe from tigers, the Ranas would have surely taken their cue from the British across the border and relied instead on hefty bounties and high-powered rifles. The lives of tigers became imperiled once they ventured into the cultivated lands that lay beyond the reserves—their safest bet was to steer clear of the farmland and villages altogether, and stay hidden in the strips and patches of wild forest that remained.

  Which posed one rather significant problem: wild tigers are unbelievably territorial. Males in particular, although females are hardly generous when it comes to the sharing of their space. Unlike African lions, which figured out at some point in their evolutionary past that working together in prides made chasing down prey on the open savanna much easier, jungle-dwelling tigers have always gone it alone, relying more on stealth to find food than on social relationships. With the exception of cub-rearing and mating, they are solitary creatures. The size of an individual tiger’s territory can vary widely, depending on the availability of prey and the sex of the cat. But in nearly all cases, the space required has the potential to push the boundaries of what a tiger reserve or an isolated patch of forest can readily provide. George Schaller, over the course of his Bengal tiger research in Kanha National Park in India in the 1960s, estimated the range of one female he studied to be roughly 25 square miles, while that of a male was put at 30 square miles. Fiona Sunquist, during her research at Chitwan National Park in Nepal a decade later, put the average range of females at 6 to 8 square miles, while the ranges of males could be considerably larger, in excess of 50 square miles. And when tigers resort to man-eating, ranges can expand even farther in their quest to find available human prey. Although tigers can and do settle in a particular area if the hunting proves especially good, finding that area can take them on long and winding treks. The legendary tiger hunter Kenneth Anderson recorded man-eaters in the 1950s with ranges that covered the gamut from 100 square miles to 600 square miles, and Jim Corbett himself described one man-eater as having a range of 1,500 square miles. That may sound improbable, at least until one considers that in the Russian Far East, where natural prey is generally far scarcer than India or Nepal, Amur tigers regularly have ranges that extend into the hundreds of square miles, some so large that the cats seem more like perpetual wanderers than settled predators, forever prowling the frozen night beneath burning stars.

  Exact numbers aside, one thing is clear: tigers need room to maneuver, and they’re seldom willing to share that space once they find it. Which is why even a slightly fragmented natural habitat can be highly problematic. There is, after all, a very good reason wild tigers have an average life span of about twelve years, half the age they often reach in captivity. There is so much competition for territory, older tigers frequently get mauled by younger rivals seeking to establish themselves in an area. The clashes are especially fierce among territorial males, who will stand on their hind legs and commence shredding each other with their foreclaws and fangs, until one of the combatants either dies or flees. But violent encounters occur between females as well. In either case, when a tiger is no longer physically able to defend its territory, it has no choice but to leave. And if available territory is limited to begin with, that usually means that the exiled tiger, cut off from its natural habitat and normal prey, will end up somewhere it’s not welcome, scrounging for food in places it does not belong. These scenarios often occur with older tigers, but they also manifest themselves with younger, disabled tigers that have been injured in fights with rivals, or—most relevant for our purposes—wounded at the hands of man.

  A prime example of what most likely happened to the Champawat is the case once again of a more recent man-eater in Chitwan National Park. The tiger in question, nicknamed Bange Bhale by researchers, had been a dominant tiger in the park between 1982 and 1984. That was, until a younger, more powerful tiger called Lucky Bhale wandered into its territory and challenged it. Bange and Lucky dueled, and Bange lost big. Injured, Bange limped out of its territory, unable to catch its normal prey thereafter. Not surprisingly, the marginalized cat, left without a home range or an effective means to kill deer, adapted to its new situation and instead became a killer of humans. Bange’s first victim was a man cutting grass in the southwest of the park. Its second kill was a man collecting firewood on the western bank of the Narayani River. And its third victim was a fisherman sleeping in his mud-and-thatch house by the water—the tiger broke in and dragged him out of his bed. Its fourth victim, however, was luckier than the first three. An elephant driver, he had a sickle with him for cutting elephant grass, and using it, was able to fend off the tiger long enough for his friend to scare it away. He hardly escaped unscathed, however; during the short tussle, the tiger had lodged its teeth in his face, leaving the man with severe damage to nerves and muscle tissue. The tiger was successfully captured after that and transported, like other man-eaters in the park, to spend the remainder of its life behind bars at the Kathmandu zoo.

  It’s not difficult to imagine a similar scuffle driving the Champawat Tiger out of its native range in the low terai. It could have been a roaring and snarling encounter with a rival female, or, if the Champawat had cubs, even a fight with an adult male, as grown males will try to kill cubs fathered by rivals. Mother tigers are notoriously protective, and they will battle to the death to protect their young. In 1981, in India’s Ranthambore tiger reserve, Valmik Thapar recorded a highly unusual encounter between a mother tiger and an aggressive male. Based on tracks found the next day, Valmik was able to re-create the event, which unfolded as follows: The female tiger attempted to distract the approaching male with affectionate advances while its two young cubs scampered away to hide. The cubs, however, made the mistake of returning too soon, only to discover a furious male annoyed at being disturbed and bent on tearing them to pieces. The mother tiger, with a resounding roar that could be heard at a guard post a full two kilometers away, objected. As Valmik would later write:

  It appears that the male must have moved, in a flash, towards the cubs, and the mother was forced to take lightning action. With a leap and a bound she attacked the male from the rear, clawing his right foreleg before sinking her canines in and killing him. It was an amazing example of instinctive reaction: a tigress killing a prime male tiger to save her cubs from possible death.

  But the tigress’s revenge didn’t stop there. The furious mother actually proceeded to “open his rump” and completely devour one of his legs. Convincing evidence, as if any was needed, that tigers do not react well to violations of their space or their property.

  Unlike the tigress described above, however, that dispatched the rival tiger with a single bite to the neck, the Champawat did not have a complete set of canine teeth—a serious handicap that would have left it at the mercy of more fully abled cats, not to mention other species. Besides contending with territorial rivals, wild tigers must also occasionally spar with other dangerous animals as well. This can include prey, boars in particular, which can be especially problematic for even a healthy tiger with a complete set of canines. Take for example this account recorded by the Indian Forest Service official J. E. Carrington Turner, which tells a gruesome version of one such encounter:

  The tiger walked down the bank on to the soft sand, and circled the boar who wheeled to face him. The circling and wheeling continued three or four times until suddenly the tiger charged the boar, striking him with all his might, and, with the greatest agility leaping aside after his blow. The boar met the onslaught by turning dextero
usly and taking it on the side of the shoulder. In this manner the tiger delivered blow after blow . . . his blows told their tale, for the boar was dripping with blood from his shoulders downwards . . . The tiger, in striking and endeavoring to jump away from the boar, either lost his balance and landed awkwardly, or skidded in the soft sand. Seeing his opportunity, and astonishingly quick to grasp it, the boar charged straight into him, and, burying his razor-edged [tusks] in the tiger’s belly, ripped and ripped again, reinforcing his thrusts to the fullest by his stupendous might and enormous weight. With the greatest difficulty the tiger succeeded in extricating himself and stood apart . . . He was disemboweled, with much of his entrails dangling low and heavily from his belly. Slinking towards the bank, with dragging intestines, he ascended it and disappeared in the thorny scrub bordering it . . .

  And as if potentially lethal prey weren’t enough, other species of predator are also quick to take advantage of a compromised tiger unable to properly defend itself. Leopards, wolves, sloth bears, and even wild dogs can all pose potential threats to a wounded tiger, and sometimes even a healthy one as well. Kenneth Anderson, the aforementioned tiger hunter, once observed an entire pack of dogs—nearly thirty total—chase down a tigress and eventually gang up to kill her, although not before she managed to snap the spine of one “with the sharp report of a twig,” and claw the life out of five more.

  All of which would have proved a serious problem for the Champawat. True, it was still an unbelievably dangerous creature, with the capacity to kill human beings in a matter of seconds. But downing a Homo sapien was an entirely different story from taking on some of the largest and most aggressive animals in the natural world. Unable to defend its territory against rivals and aggressive males, incapable of taking down much of its usual prey or fending off competitive predators, its existence was gravely threatened. It would have been forced out of its home range, to fare as best it could in the human hinterlands beyond, hunting its new bipedal prey. With only one issue: thanks to malaria, the terai was still not terribly populated. While logging and agriculture undertaken by absentee landlords had begun to transform the landscape in a decidedly human direction, the Tharu settlements to be found there were still relatively sporadic and widely distributed. In short, for a cat that ate almost exclusively humans, these were not prime hunting grounds at all.

  Farther north, however, where the swampy, flat jungles turned to tall, craggy hills, malaria was far less of a threat and human beings settled in denser concentrations. The peaks and valleys were dotted with the villages and terraced fields of the Pahari, or hill dwellers, with plenty of brush in the nooks and crannies to hide in. No tiger in its right mind would pick the outskirts of the noisy towns and nearly deerless forests of the Nepalese middle hills as home, but it had virtually nowhere else to go. To exist in the world meant to leave the familiar elephant grass and sal trees of the terai behind forever. Survival, in effect, lay elsewhere, in the misty peaks above. More than a century later, we can still imagine its path, prowling, lurking, ever hunting, heading north through the grasslands, past the ancient stonework of Baitada’s temples, along the fringes of Daiji . . . then up the first steep ascent of the Siwalik Hills, golden tiger eyes flashing, on the lookout for fresh meat. After cresting the first ridge, it’s down into the inner Madhesh Valley, which offers more in the way of cover, but still little along the lines of anything human to eat. So the tiger continues, its ears cocked to pick up our peculiar sounds, its nostrils flared for our familiar smells. Soon, it’s going up again, skirting stands of heavy oak and shaggy pine, into the peaks of the Mahabharat Range, the very beginning of the Himalayas . . .

  And then the Champawat finds it. Its own Nirvana. Tucked into the folds of the mountains, in the district of Dadeldhura, is the village of Rupal. A place so perfectly situated for the hunting of human beings, the tiger has no reason—at least no natural reason—to ever leave. And like an angel of death, it descends upon the valley.

  * * *

  Even today, upon examining Rupal from a bird’s-eye view, an obvious truth emerges: the village is, almost literally, a human target. When seen from a satellite’s lofty perch, it appears as a populous, beige-tone bull’s-eye of houses and cultivated fields, surrounded on all sides by rings of steep, green hills and densely wooded ravines. From accounts of more recent Nepalese tiger attacks recorded outside Chitwan, it has been well established that the most “successful” man-eaters—meaning those that are able to evade capture and continue killing on a regular basis—are those that have adopted the technique of snatching humans from the edge of villages and quickly dragging them away into steep, wooded ravines, places where hunters often cannot give chase even if they wanted to. In this way, a man-eating tiger could finish its kill uninterrupted, and steer clear of anyone who might attempt to stop it.

  In Rupal, it seems this was what our tiger did. With this dense pocket of human settlement, surrounded on all sides by wooded gorges, the tiger could essentially attack from any angle, keeping the populace constantly guessing and in fear. Hemmed in on all sides, there was nowhere to go—they still had to tend to their fields, gather wood, and cut fodder on the village edge, all of which would have put them at risk from a tiger that had mastered the technique of swooping in from the tree line, snatching them by the neck, and spiriting them away into the dark depths of a ravine. To a man-eating tiger, picking off humans from such an ideally situated settlement would have been akin to shooting fish in a barrel.

  Which explains, finally, the puzzling course of the Champawat. To a normal tiger, the steep, rocky terrain of the Nepalese middle hills would not have been ideal habitat at all. The lowland terai would have been a much better fit, full of game and bountiful in potential mates. But to an abnormal tiger with limited prospects for establishing its own territory, and an inability to catch much of its natural prey, the terai would have no longer sufficed. For a compromised man-eater, the humans of the sparse settlements of Tharu would not have been enough to sustain it. Further, with increased competition for diminishing habitat, it would not have been able to hold its own against competitive tigers. The hills to the north, on the other hand, would have provided exactly what a tiger like the Champawat was searching for: unclaimed territory full of human food. It was not coincidence or happenstance that this tiger ended up far from home, prowling the outskirts of Rupal in the towering hills of the Himalayas. Tigers are, after all, intelligent and versatile predators that can adjust and adapt their hunting strategies to suit their environment and prey. The Champawat chose this location because of just how conducive it was to its new mode of hunting. It was, in effect, a strategic choice. And as a strategy, it proved extremely effective.

  Too effective, as a matter of fact. For while the tiger was able to evade bounty hunters and paid shikaris for several years, its weekly toll of human victims eventually mounted to the point where something drastic had to be done. As to who made that decision, there is some divergence of opinion depending upon the account. According to Jim Corbett, the Champawat was hunted by “a body of armed Nepalese, after she had killed two hundred human beings.” Many historians since have echoed that sentiment, inferring that it was a regiment of the Nepalese Army, or a cadre of official government shikaris sent in to finish the job. Weapons were not commonplace among villagers, meaning outsiders would have likely been required to organize and participate in the ensuing hunt. If this was the case—and particularly if elephants were involved on a large scale, as they almost always were in tiger hunts—there must have been at least some government involvement, possibly even a direct mandate coming from the Rana prime minister in power at that time, Chandra Shumsher Jang Bahadur Rana. Rupal was, after all, just a two-day march from one of the Ranas’ favorite terai hunting grounds, and an escaped tiger that was killing villagers by the hundreds might have been a topic of interest. The occasional man-eater was by no means unheard of, but a single tiger devouring two hundred people was another thing entirely—an unprecedented
catastrophe that would have demanded an unprecedented response. A show of force, as it were.

  This seems plausible, although the account of Nara Bahadur Bisht, the elderly Nepalese gentleman interviewed by Peter Byrne, and who was a boy in Rupal at the time of the attacks, paints a slightly different picture of the event. According to his recollections, the Ranas turned a deaf ear on the pleas of villagers, ignoring whatever petitions were sent their way. As a result, according to Bisht, the large-scale hunt designed to finish the Champawat was largely a grassroots endeavor; the local villagers, realizing no help was on the way, organized the party themselves, drafting a thousand men from every village for twenty miles, to be summoned upon the next human kill. Such a scenario is certainly possible, although Bisht very well could have been influenced by anti-Rana sentiments that persisted in Nepal in the latter half of the twentieth century, following the revolution of 1951—an uprising that ended the Rana dynasty. In the wake of the revolution, the desire to attribute agency to the general populace, rather than an unpopular leader, is more than understandable.