Riot Wear for Tiger Poop Scoopers

It’s a sight that would surely have puzzled Sundarbans’ Royal Bengal Tigers: scores of men clad in strange black gear bent doubly over searching for the big cats’ poop.

It’s a sight that would surely have puzzled Sundarbans’ Royal Bengal Tigers: scores of men clad in strange black gear bent doubly over searching for the big cats’ poop. That, for you, is the tiger census that started on 4 March. In the past, enumerators would only collect pugmarks. But with the conclusions contested by experts, the Ministry of Environment & Forests has asked the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve authorities to collect scat and send them for DNA analysis to arrive at a fair count of tigers. But collecting scat means venturing deep into tiger territory, and with the department employees reluctant, given the man-eating reputation of Sundarbans’ tigers, forest authorities ordered protective body suits from a Mumbai-based company. But these are actually anti-riot suits made of high-performance plastic and polyethylene generally used by the police as protection from mobs. Their efficacy from attacking tigers is doubtful. The suits are complemented by helmets. Senior forest officers concede that the suits offer little protection from attacking tigers, since the neck is exposed and tigers are said to attack from the back and target the neck, snapping it swiftly with their powerful jaws. But to admit this would amount to triggering an employee  revolt. So senior foresters are keeping their fingers crossed.

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