Born Free Foundation - Keep Wildlife in the Wild

Tony Wiles visit to the Born Free tiger facility in the Bannerghatta Biological Park, Karnataka, South India from 30^th July to 12th August 2009.

The theme for this trip was rain and then more rain. Almost every evening we had a quite heavy downpour of monsoon rain, which is very good news for the forest and its inhabitants.

Unfortunately the monsoon, which is a little early this year, has created a massive surge in plant growth in the tiger forest areas, making it impossible to see more than a couple of metres into their domain.

Although the forest areas are very overgrown, the night kraals and den areas are looking very good with the reception area looking particularly smart. The staff has spent a considerable time planting shrubs and trees to create a very colourful and pleasing first view as one arrives at the facility.

Regarding the animals, the wild Masti tiger has settled down and is now given access to a much larger night kraal without the retaining bars we had to put up when we first had him. Although much calmer with the four staff who look after him, he will still try to attack anyone who dares walk near his fence line.

He has slimmed down a lot and is looking in very good shape, far less nervous and more interested in all around him.

In fact we have now decided the time has come to allow him into the forest area.

The first stage is to fence off a small part of the forest kraal and remove all the thorny undergrowth, just leaving the ever green and soft bushes plus all the trees. We have to do this as he would be always getting nasty thorns in his solitary front foot as he hopped along.

We will give him a small area of forest first as we want to be sure he will come back to the night kraal or den for feeding and any medical attention if required. Once he is comfortable with that we will look at moving the fence to enlarge the area.

Roque was again very happy in my company and spent a lot of time just hanging around me always keen to interact. We spent loads of time playing hunter and hunted, with me being the hunted of course, we also spent time just sitting next to each other just passing the time of day.

As the undergrowth in his forest area was over six feet high, one bound off his raised forest pool and he was gone in absolute silence.

As with Roque, I felt that Zeudy was a little under weight, so I arranged to increase their feed by 3 and 2 kgs respectively. As Roque is naturally slim by sub species and Zeudy has always been on the slim side it can be difficult to judge how much they will eat.

I only got to see Zeudy in her night kraal as, with all the other cats, her forest area was thick with undergrowth. Although she was not particularly active, she is 14 years old now which is more or less the full lifespan of a wild tiger, she appeared happy, very relaxed and hopefully has many more years ahead of her.

Since the arrival of the Masti tiger, Harak has made it his mission to befriend him even to the point of coming out of the forest area and staying in his night kraal to be near Masti. My initial thought was Harak was patrolling his territory and making sure Masti does not intrude, but as there does not appear to be any animosity or stress with either of the cats I am beginning to think there could possibly be some sort of strange bond between them.

King also seems to be getting in on the act and on occasion comes out of the forest to his night kraal to be in company with the other two. He is probably the most nervous of the BFF tigers and although not frightened by people would rather be away from humanity deep in his forest area.