Video: Pregnant Tigress Rescued in India
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 02.21.08
Here's something you don't see every day (at least, not around where most of our readers are).
A pregnant tigress strayed into Deulbari, a village about 150 miles south of Calcutta and close to the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve. Scared villagers threw stones and chased her until she took refuge in a palm tree. "She was eventually shot with a tranquillizer dart and captured before being taken aboard the fishing vessel." Sometimes there's a happy ending. "Her wounds were treated before she was released deep inside the mangrove reserve."
The picture above is of the tigress jumping off the fishing boat. Below you can see her swimming to safety, and you can see a video about the whole adventure here.
The Sunderbans, nearly 10,000 square kilometres (3,860 square miles) of marshlands and mangrove forests along the coast of the Bay of Bengal, is one of the few remaining natural tiger habitats in India.Tigers have been slowly disappearing from forests and reserves in India due to poaching, growing tourism, and a shortage of properly trained forest guards.
The tiger population has dropped from nearly 3,600 five years ago to about 1,411, the government-run Project Tiger said recently.
:: Tigress's spectacular leap to freedom
See also: ::It’s Official: Only 1,411 Tigers Left In India's Forest Reserves, ::New (Bizarre) Mammal Joins the Family!, ::The Next Polar Bear: Pacific Walrus, ::Who Wants to Save the Aye-Aye?, ::"Weird" Animals Need Protection, Too
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More excitement than the San Francisco Zoo!
read in the paper today about this, it says 1000 villages chased the tiger for 14hours, burnt it out of one tree and chased it up the small palm tree where they then trang'ed it.
1.4bil ppl vs 1.4k tigers .. not good.