Maharashtra state will no longer charge forest rangers with human rights violation for shooting poachers. The decision is in response to an increase in the number of tigers killed by poachers. Fourteen tigers have been killed in India this year according to the
Wildlife Protection Society of India. Last year 13 were killed. In 2006 Sariska Tiger Reserve lost all of its 26 tigers, mostly to poaching, and in 2009 none of the 24 tigers in Panna Tiger Reserve survived poaching. In last November two tigers were found dead in Maharashtra, a male was killed in a wire snare and a tigress died chewing through an electric power line. Tigers are critically endangered; a census estimate in 2011 is 1,706. When tigers once roamed the subcontinent in tens of thousands, that is a pitiable remnant that man seems to be incapable of protecting from extermination by the folk medicine obsession. Assam has a similar lethal force provision that some observers credit for the decline in poaching of rhinos. Maharashtra authorities will also offer payment for information about poachers and smugglers, as well as increasing the number of patrols.
