cattle – Pain In The Bud

In his memoir, Man-Eaters of Kumaon, legendary tiger hunter (and later staunch conservationist) Jim Corbett described how he and his men arrived to find a ghost town when they tracked a man-eating tiger to a rural village.

Every door was closed and locked, shutters were closed tight, and despite the fact that it was harvest time, not a single person was working the nearby fields.

The people who lived there had good reason to be petrified. The infamous Champawat tigress had killed more than 430 people by that point, including a young woman from the village just a few days earlier. Usually the tigress would vanish from an area after a kill, frustrating locals and hunters by popping up virtually anywhere in a 50-mile radius, but for some reason she stuck around the village and sat on the outskirts at night, keeping the local people awake with her calls.

Corbett’s famed hunt of the “demon of Champawat” happened in 1907, and although it might sound like a problem from the past, it’s current reality for people in parts of India, Nepal and, to a lesser extent, the sparsely populated mountain forests in eastern Russia.

In Garwha and Ranchi, two towns in eastern India about 215km (133 miles) apart, “villagers have stopped using forest routes to reach markets and are reluctant to leave their homes for work,” the Times of India reported on Monday.

That’s because hungry tigers have been on the prowl, demonstrating little fear of people as they help themselves to livestock. Between Jan. 1 and Jan. 6, the tigers killed and ate three cattle and a buffalo.

Siberian tiger — Tigers require large, contiguous tracks of land measuring in the hundreds of square miles. India and Russia have both set aside massive preserves for the apex predators to increase their numbers in the wild. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

So far they’ve eluded camera traps, but forest rangers say they believe there are two tigers because of the distance between Garwha and Ranchi, which is almost three times the typical tiger range.

In places where big cats live in proximity to humans, especially farmers, the government pays compensation to the owners of livestock killed and eaten by the predators.

There’s also a separate, more controversial compensation program for the families of people killed by tigers. Recent court cases in the country have hinged on the cold calculations of attaching monetary value to human life, and whether families are owed compensation if their relatives knowingly entered tiger preserves.

For India, it’s part of a delicate balancing act between conserving the country’s national animal and one of nature’s most beloved species, and avoiding the ire of people who are impacted by their presence. When big cats prey on livestock, if the government does not address the situation, locals will eventually take matters into their own hands and try to kill the apex predators. That usually doesn’t work out well for either side.

On average, about 60 people are killed each year by tigers in India, according to government statistics. There’s been a sharp increase in victims in recent years, with tigers taking 110 human lives in 2022 and 83 in 2023, although it’s not yet clear why.

As for livestock, a 2018 study by wildlife biologists with the Corbett Foundation documented 8,365 reported instances of big cats killing cattle, buffalo and other animals between 2006 and 2015. That works out to about 830 per year, with tigers responsible for 570 livestock kills on average and leopards responsible for the rest.

To reduce the number of inter-species conflicts, the government of India has relocated thousands of families away from the country’s 27 tiger preserves in addition to compensating farmers for their losses.

Tiger sub — A tiger cub on a preserve in India. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

On a tangential note, this is another reason why the persistent claims of big cats stalking the British countryside strain credulity.

To paraphrase wildlife conservationist Egil Droge of the University of Oxford, when big cats live in an area, you know it because the signs are everywhere — massive and unmistakable pug marks (paw prints) on the ground, trees left with deep gauges by males marking their territory, and dung also serving as a territorial marker.

“I’ve worked with large carnivores in Africa since 2007 and it’s obvious if big cats are around. You would regularly come across prints of their paws along roads. The rasping sound of a leopard’s roar can be heard from several kilometres,” Droge wrote in a 2023 post about alleged big cat sightings in the UK.

Last but not least, big cats eat. A lot. A reliable supply of large prey animals is necessary to support even the smallest of breeding populations, and felids of all species are known to go for easy meals — in this case livestock — when the opportunity presents itself.

Still, the idea refuses to die, and there are still regular reports from people who have seen large cats and insist they’re not our domesticated friends.

Leopard in a pub — “So we left the sheep there at the edge of the field and made sure the lady saw us before we buggered off over the fence. Next day, we was in all the papers! A right laugh that was, mate.”

In more disconcerting news from the bird flu front, a new study warns of exceptionally high mortality rates for cats who are infected with the virus.

The study found 89.6 percent of avian influenza cases in cats are fatal, making the virus a virtual death sentence.

That applies to all species of cats, from the true big cats in the panthera genus — tigers, lions, jaguars and leopards — to felines, a broad group that includes domestic cats, lynx, cheetahs, pumas, ocelots, servals, jaguarundis and others.

“We don’t know if the cats are more susceptible than anybody else,” the American Veterinary Medical Association’s Michael Bailey told USA Today. “It’s just the fact they’re exposed to higher viral burdens because of where they go.”

Whether cats are more susceptible is up for debate, but one SPCA chapter said felids of all species are “uniquely vulnerable” to avian influenza because there are so many ways it can be transmitted to them by doing nothing more than what they typically do.

The @SeattleTimes reported on the first 2 cases of Avian bird flu that’s killed 2 wild #cougars in Washington, as discovered by Panthera #Puma Program and Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife. Learn more from Puma Program Director Dr. Mark Elbroch: https://t.co/feOcHnPpWT pic.twitter.com/v2nrM1jDOC

— Panthera (@PantheraCats) December 21, 2024

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Cats can be infected by catching and eating birds and mice, drinking raw milk, eating raw meat (including commercial raw pet food), and exposure to infected animals, including cows.

In Washington state, two wild pumas died after contracting the virus from prey, a development Panthera puma director Mark Elbroch called “troubling.”

“It certainly raises eyebrows and makes one wonder: is it indicative of a bigger pattern out of sight?” Elbroch asked, noting pumas are at the top of the food chain in the Pacific northwest.

To date, as many as 900 cattle herds across the US have tested positive for bird flu, according to the US Department of Agriculture, while two thirds of California’s dairy farms — 660 out of 984 — had confirmed cases as of Dec. 26.

Bird flu was the confirmed cause of death in a house cat from Washington who died after eating Northwest Naturals commercial raw food, which has since been recalled. Three house cats in Texas succumbed to the virus, which they possibly contracted from hunting mice. The bird flu was also responsible for the deaths of two domestic cats in California who drank raw milk, and 20 of 37 wild cats — including a tiger, several pumas, bobcats and a Geoffroy’s cat (pictured at left) — at the Wild Felid Advocacy Center, a sanctuary in Washington.

adorable cream kitten drinking milk outdoors — Contrary to popular belief, cats are typically lactose intolerant. Credit: DHG Photography/Pexels

Veterinarians are warning people to keep their cats indoors and to avoid raw meat diets, which have become more popular in recent years. Cats should not be given cow’s milk anyway, since most are lactose intolerant. As a general rule, kittens should consume milk from their mothers or kitten-specific formula, but should not be given milk from any other source.

“If you feed your pet contaminated raw meat or milk, they will likely die. I’m not exaggerating, just giving it to you straight,” tweeted Dr. Kristen Coleman, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health.

While the west coast accounts for the majority of confirmed bird flu infections, the virus continues to spread. A map from the Centers for Disease Control shows where infections have been verified as of late December:

Unfortunately, the bird flu outbreak comes on the heels of a heavily politicized pandemic and a major loss in trust in American institutions like the CDC after efforts to obscure the origins of SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

It’s not clear if the fallout will make Americans less likely to heed warnings about bird flu and other potential viruses, but animal welfare groups and virologists say people can keep their cats safe with a handful of common-sense steps.