The tiger is of course extinct in Pakistan but it should be a sobering thought that it has only become so within the last 100 years
Illustration: Tarun Sehgal / CSE As the world celebrates yet another ‘Day of the Tiger’, Down to Earth decided to shed some light on an area which not many would associate with the cat superstar in today’s day and age: Modern-day Pakistan.
The nation-state formed after the Partition of British India in 1947 has spectacular fauna: From its national animal, the Markhor in the northern mountains to marine life in the Arabian Sea to the south.
But the tiger is not one of them. Indeed, India’s western neighbour is not included in Asia’s tiger range states stretching from Russia to China to Indonesia. And yet, tigers roamed the plains of the Indus and the desert of Cholistan just a century ago. So when and why did they vanish?
For this, one needs to understand the ecology of this area. Among the best works on this is The mammals of Pakistan (1977), written by British naturalist TJ Roberts.
He tells us that the land that is now Pakistan is “…a transitional zone between two of the world’s six major zoogeographical regions, the Palearctic and the Oriental, and further, species have also come from as far afield as the Ethiopian region…”
“The present distribution of the fauna also owes much to these various origins as well as to the routes that the different species have had to take to overcome some important barriers to movement which more or less surround and form part of Pakistan,” notes Roberts.
One of the main routes through which faunal species entered Pakistan is from the south of the Thar desert, which acted as a formidable barrier to movement. Here is Roberts again:
One such route lying in the extreme south, comprises the seacoast with its mangrove littoral and its immediate hinterland of savannah type vegetation in the Rann of Kutch.
Vegetation and climate afforded a more moderating bridge on this route, according to the naturalist.
“The southern route was used by the Swamp-deer (Cervus duvauceli) which colonized the Indus riverine tracts up to the forests of Sukkur whilst the Tiger extended its range as far as Panjnad on the Indus River even within this century. Both these species regrettably no longer occur in Pakistan,” writes Roberts.
The main parts of Pakistan where literature mentions tigers, are the province of Sindh and the former princely state of Bahawalpur, today part of the country’s most populous Punjab province.
Bahawalpur is the site of the Cholistan desert and is bounded on the north by the Satluj river as it flows down from the Indian border to meet the Chenab. Both rivers have already received the waters of the other three rivers of Punjab, namely Jhelum, Ravi and Beas.
The Chenab and Satluj form the Panjnad river at their confluence near Uch Sharif. The Panjnad flows and joins the Indus at Mithankot, which later flows into Sindh.
The princely state of Bahawalpur acceded to the Dominion of Pakistan in 1947. Its people were mostly Muslim and the Amirs, the rulers of the state, claimed descent from the Abbasid Caliphs of Islamic history, according to The History of Bahawalpur by Shahamet Ali.
Roberts writes:
The late Amir of Bahawalpur, HH Sir Sadiq Muhammad Khan Abbasi, related how his father had shot 13 tigers within Bahawalpur State territory in the Indus riverine jungles and that the last specimen was shot by him in 1906 a few miles below Panjnad (pers. comm., 1965). At that time, the Indus River was surrounded by a continuous belt from four to twelve miles wide of Tamarix doica and Saccharum munja jungle.
South of Bahawalpur lay Sindh. The tiger used to be found here too. One account that I came across was in Report on Upper Sindh and the Eastern portion of Cutchee, with a Memorandum on the Beloochee and other Tribes of Upper Scinde and Cutchee, and a map of part of the Country referred to. By Lieutenant J. POSTANS, Assistant Political Agent.
This is a section in JOURNAL OF THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL, Calcutta VOL. XII. PART I.—JANUARY TO JUNE, 1843. The account seems to have been written just after the East India Company’s forces under Sir Charles Napier defeated the Talpur Mirs of Sindh and incorporated the kingdom into British India.
Postans notes:
The tiger and leopard, are said to be found in the neighbourhood of Sukkur; but it is doubtful if they descend lower than the Bhawulpore territories, where they are said to be numerous.
Sadly like Bahawalpur, the tiger died out in Upper Sindh too. Roberts says:
J A Murray, in describing the fauna of Sind in 1884, stated that Khairpur State in the Indus riverine forest tracts was its last stronghold. The last survivor, a tigress was shot in 1886 by Col McRae (Eates, 1968).
This, then, is the story of the tiger in a part of its realm that it formerly lorded over and then lost. As Roberts notes poignantly: “The tiger is of course extinct in Pakistan but it should be a sobering thought that it has only become so within the last 70 years, in a region which cradled man’s civilization for over 4000 years.”
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