CRITICAL INSIGHT
The hunter who killed Avni said that he did so in self-defence. We have just 3,900 tigers remaining and in urgent need of immediate plans to save our tigers.
Kabir | The New Leam
It is no longer those times in the history of the planet where there was an abundance of wilderness and animals roamed about the surface of the earth in pride. The establishment of the human civilization accompanied by the restless greed to grab and grow, to conquer and destroy have led to a grave situation for animals and plant life.
The human tendency to control nature, to exploit natural resources for the establishment of comfort and the intention to think only of the self in the pursuit of development have destroyed the earth in unprecedented ways. One of the biggest examples of this unsustainable growth and the bad consequence that it had on planet earth has been the killing of tigress Avni.
[irp]
It is ironic that with less than 3,900 tigers remaining in the wild- we have killed one more. The tigress Avni was shot dead in the forests of Maharashtra. It was suspected that Avni had killed many people over the last two year and there was a long spread hunt for her. The tigress was shot under controversial circumstances by hunters last week. The villagers celebrated the death of Avni but environmentalists have opposed it. It was recently that another tigress in Odisha was killed on the suspicion that she had killed a woman in the village.
The hunter who has killed Avni has alleged that he killed her in self-defence because the tranquiliser dart that he had thrown at her failed to pacify her. It is true that the presence of Avni in the area caused difficulty for the population living there but this does not mean that the animal-wild conflict should be treated in such a manner. Animal right activists argue that such big cat should not be called man eater because they don’t trespass into human habitats to kill people- it is the opposite.
The tigers attack humans when humans enter their territory or when they face displacement. We live in an age when the world has already lost 95% of it tigers beginning the 20th century. We can’t be so casual about them.
