Tigers

Conservation is a great and important thing. Of course, when we talk about dangerous animals, most people living in safely urbanized areas may not think of some aspects of living in close contact with these animals. I am having the chance to experience this now. Five tigers were captured in Aceh, North Sumatra, where they were causing “conflict”, eating cattle and people and terrorizing several villages. The plan is to put them radio-collars to be able to track them (via GPS), and release them elsewhere. Elsewhere happens to be about 25 km from our field station. Tigers can cover about 30 km/day. The GPS data are almost top-secret, only three people have access to them, which makes sense, given the risk of them falling in the wrong hands. But now, in addition to the “conflict elephants” (four, infamous man-killers), we have “conflict tigers”. Encountering one is bad for two stupid reasons: one, you cannot really claim to have seen a really “natural” tiger, it wouldn’t count, it has a collar.. And two, while the behavior of “normal” animals, that live relatively undisturbed in the forest, is somehow predictable, I would really not know what to expect from these tigers, who already had a taste, in many senses, of men..