A Tiger Called Broken Tail Natural World

I remember distinctly the last time I saw him.

We started hearing the alarm calls, we thought he's coming, he's coming, he's coming.

Broken Tail came around the corner

and he came walking directly towards me,

and I just kept rolling and rolling, and rolling and he looked as good as he had ever looked.

Big, powerful, relaxed and arrogant and confident.

He walked up towards me, towards me, closer and closer

and I was just so excited and I turned to Salim

and he was just shaking his head going, "Yes."

He knew, he knew I'd nailed the shot and then I turned to look back,

Broken Tail was gone.

And I never saw him again.

Ranthambhore, it's a magical place.

There's a fort on top of a hill, which looks out onto these lakes and very ancient hills.

Extraordinary landscape. There's no place quite like it in the world

because you have all these ruins of where people used to live.

They've all been abandoned over the years.

And now, the tigers wander through these places.

It's their patch and they're the King of the Jungle now.

These, without doubt could be the last of their kind.

When you think of how many there were once here, they seemed limitless.

They're having to really battle to stay alive and they shouldn't have to.

I know it's a cliche but you know if tigers ever do disappear, that's it.

They'll never come back.

I was sent here as a budding wildlife cameraman

and this was my first real break, this was my first big opportunity.

Go out there, find a tiger and get me a story.

I found myself driving into Ranthambhore one morning with Salim, who I'd just met,

neither of us tiger experts.

Salim used to bring tourists into this area

but Salim didn't have much of a clue, really, and I certainly didn't have a clue about tigers.

Now it's working.

Ranthambhore had to teach us about tigers.

How fresh do you reckon these pug-marks are?

They're from the morning.

-My God!

-Oh, my God!

Once you see your first wild tiger, it's an experience that stays with you.

You shouldn't have an apex in evolution.

but if there was one, it's got to be the tiger.

Cut.

We had to explore the area, get to see where the tigers were moving and then choose a tiger.

So we started following this tigress that we called, Machali.

And because we spent every day on her trail, she became very tame.

Let's go, come on, lets keep moving.

She's getting a bit close.

I remember coming up to Christmas and Machali started acting strangely.

We thought, Salim and I, she must be looking for a man.

And on Christmas morning,

the sun was just coming up beautifully over the hill.

Machali came walking up with her suitor.

He was a great big male called Bomburam.

They spent the next few days together mating continuously.

Sure enough out came these two little bundles.

The bundles that we were going to call Broken Tail and Slant Ear.

Broken Tail was just special, he was adventurous,

exuberant, kind of full of life, charismatic, arrogant, fearless...

Totally fearless, he would chase our car some days we thought he was going to come into the car sometimes.

Never seen that in a tiger before. For a male tiger they are normally more reserved.

Salim and I had the unique, literally unique experience.

I don't think anyone had ever done what we had done before.

We spent 600 days in Ranthambhore, from dawn till dusk, every day,

following the one tiger family.

I remember my father used to call me "The Bee" and that's because

I was always as busy as a bee, pretty much getting up to no good,

things I shouldn't be doing and, in that way, I guess Broken Tail mirrored me as a child.

Broken Tail was always the ringleader, mischievous,

playful, so confident.

What did he think of us? Couple of eejits following them all the time.

Sitting out in the sun when he was sitting in the shade.

In reality if he doesn't want to eat you and you're not threatening him you, sort of, don't matter.

I followed him steadily until he was about two-and-a-half.

I think I knew Broken Tail as well as I knew my own daughters.

He was going to become a really important tiger in Ranthambhore.

You felt like one day he was going to dominate that area.

He was going to be "the man".

Sadly, it wasn't to be the case.

Something happened after that, we don't know what.

We weren't finding Broken Tail's pug-marks at all.

Broken Tail was gone.

Where's Broken Tail?

Where is he?

I'd love to see him again.

I hope we do.

GROWLING

I couldn't believe it.

To see this amazing animal I'd spent so much time with,

that this is how it ended up.

Killed by a train.

In the middle of the night in this God forsaken, barren place where no tiger has a right to be.

I went to bed that night.

Talking to Salim the next day and he said he couldn't sleep,

he just kept thinking about how tragic that this happened.

WALKIE TALKIE: Probably only a couple of miles...

What was he doing there? That's the thing I couldn't understand.

How on earth did he get from Ranthambhore,

this wonderful sort of tiger paradise as it were,

to this place called Darra that I had never heard of. How did he...?

Everyone used to say to me,

absolutely impossible and Broken Tail had done it.

So immediately there was a mystery, although his death was sad

it opened up lots of questions that I felt I had to answer.

We felt we owed it to Broken Tail in some way to retrace his journey.

That's the only thing we could do for him was to somehow benefit his kind by undertaking this journey.

We hope to fill in what happened on those last days.

We didn't know how long that journey had taken him.

Had anyone witnessed any part of that journey?

Where did they see him?

We felt by doing it we were going to learn something

important that could ultimately help in tiger conservation.

The story of Broken Tail is really the story of the modern Indian tiger.

All tigers in India are born into these island reserves,

but they're isolated all over the country.

They were once part of this great population that stretched

right across India and throughout the subcontinent.

Human pressure around Ranthambhore is massive, about a quarter of a million people living right on its borders.

Almost like an invading army waiting to come in.

Every little inch of that land is in use.

Watch where you put your feet now.

As soon as you come out, that's what you see.

BELLS TINKLE

All you can hear is goats and all those goats, they're eating Ranthambhore National Park.

We've only been on the road about ten minutes, I'd say, and already we've hit this devastated landscape.

They're blasting these mountains.

This is the problem when you have island reserves,

as soon as you draw a line on a map people start fraying away at the edges.

You have to assert your influence otherwise year on year people are

just going to move further and further into the park.

How on earth did Broken Tail manage to handle this sort of stuff?

He didn't know he wasn't in Ranthambhore any more.

He never made a decision to leave.

He just wandered.

In the night you just cross, no problem?

Yeah, no problem at all to cross.

As we set off on our journey we were thinking why did he leave?

Was he kicked out of the reserve?

Was he getting interference from people... Poaching?

Mogyas shoot quite a few tigers in this valley right here.

We're just paying a surprise visit to a guy called Lackan.

He belongs to a group, a tribal caste of Mogyas or traditional

hunters and poachers and we reckon he has killed tigers in the recent past.

Lackan?

Oh, Lackan.

THEY SPEAK IN DIALECT

I suppose the straight question, has he been directly or indirectly involved in killing tigers?

HE ANSWERS IN DIALECT

He used to be a hunter.

He has done a lot of hunting, he has killed a lot of animals for hunger, but hunger is still there.

I stopped that work but hunger is still there.

And did you make a lot of money from killing tigers?

He says if I had made good money, I'd have nice buildings here.

Only I fill my stomach with that money, otherwise I don't make much money.

How much money would he get personally for one animal?

Sometimes 6,000 sometimes 5,000 rupees.

5,000 rupees?

How much is that? 100 dollars?

Yeah, not more than that.

Yeah, you see these guys, they're not the guys making the big money, obviously.

Somehow puts things in perspective a little bit when you meet the guy and you have this preconceived idea,

they're going to be real nasty kind of people,

but of course he's just a bloke who doesn't have any money.

You do look at the kids and once you're a father yourself you kind of think...

"I'd do anything for my kids,

"I wouldn't let them go hungry no matter what."

Something about having kids yourself it just makes you

look at other people's in a different light somehow.

Lovely little kids.

Even Mogya kids play Ring A Ring A Rosie.

It's not just Lackan here and this little group.

Every village in this entire belt has got Mogyas living there.

So every village in this entire area has people who have the knowledge,

the capability and sometimes the opportunity to kill tigers.

So Broken Tail was really threading a fine line walking through here.

People have referred to this area in the past as being a killing zone for tigers.

Tigers don't get through here.

If ever they leave the park, this is where they get hammered.

So Broken Tail was an exception to the rule.

I think people sometimes make the mistake of saying, "It's tigers or people!". And sometimes you think,

well, are there so many human problems in India that why should they bother about tigers?

But the tiger is a human problem.

The bottom line is that without tigers, the forests of India will disappear.

The only well protected forests are those that have tigers.

As soon as tigers disappear the political eye is removed

from that forest and it quickly starts to degrade.

If you lose those watersheds,

everyone living along this mountain range is going to have a serious problem.

It's not just about saving fluffy animals.

Every person who lives along these mountain ranges

actually depends on tigers too, they just don't all realise it yet.

So you reckon more likely cross out of the park, head onto this ridge.

Any water up there?

There is some water holes. Spring water holes, kind of thing.

-Is that flat on top there?

-It's flat on the top.

So he could've gone all the way along the top?

Yes. It's possible.

It's beautiful.

It seems like Broken Tail passed through this landscape almost like a ghost,

but he couldn't remain invisible all the time, there were just so many eyes out here that could spot him.

We've heard that someone in this village might have seen something.

He go to graze his goats, he's a shepherd and he saw tiger.

-Big, big head.

-Quite big? Quite big head? And where exactly did he see him? Right on top.

In the daytime he saw... If ever a tiger is going to walk in the middle of the day

in the middle of, you know, people around and goat herders, that'd be Broken Tail.

This could be Broken Tail because the time he's saying, the time Broken Tail left Ranthambhore.

-That is really something, isn't it?

-This is exciting, yeah?

Because we weren't even totally sure if he'd come this way,

-we were guessing he was coming as far as here. We guessed right.

-Now we have evidence.

I've actually got some photographs of Broken Tail that we took in Ranthambhore.

This is when he was a little cub.

More and more I've come to realise that the people you really have to convert,

if you want to save tigers, are the people who are living with them.

People who live in Rajasthan have never seen a tiger.

They don't have any books to look at them, they don't have TVs to see them on TV.

They're actually just not a part of their lives, in any way.

We got to know him extremely well.

As the months went by

you'd think you could go up and stroke him, but you'd be dead if you did.

He'd get up to all sorts of mischief.

He'd be the one to break cover, you know, when the tigress goes hunting

it's very important that the cubs stay absolutely quiet.

As she would leave,

she'd make a little noise that would mean stay there,

shut up, be quiet until I come back.

Give it half an hour, an hour, Broken Tail would start moving around

and he kind of dragged Slant Ear into problems.

Of course they had no chance of actually catching anything. The exuberance of youth.

Great times, great times.

Oh, I bet that feels good.

I bet that feels good.

Dickie Boy! Hope you brought some food.

Mr Colin and Mr Salim.

-How are you guys doing?

-Good, good.

-You guys have been riding long?

-Yeah, it was a long day.

Oh, my backside, man, I tell you.

We started the Project Tiger in 1973 because we thought things had reached such a bad place

that there are less than 2,000 tigers in India

and it's 2009 now and there are less than 2,000 tigers again.

Probably lower numbers then there were when Project Tiger started.

And they still call it a success story.

An India without tigers would be

an India sitting on

the brink of an environmental disaster.

A huge disaster, which is inevitable.

You are talking about a large chunk of India's population would go from being poor to really poor.

The problem is we will probably see this five or ten years after the tigers have gone or maybe longer,

15 or 20 years after the tigers and we don't think that far ahead.

A problem is that a poor man does not think very long term.

If he could get some benefits now

and maybe pay a huge price for it 20 years later, he'll take the benefits.

Basically the whole system stinks.

And if it stays on like this we are kind of looking at a dead end.

It's going to come very soon.

Do you think we're looking at the end of the tiger?

Yes, yes.

We've got five more years to change the entire system.

Things won't disappear in five years,

but if we don't fix what's wrong we might have tigers for another 30, 40 years in a few

zoo kind of reserves, but as far as evolution goes,

tigers would reach an end.

Morning.

I sometimes wonder why he never turned back.

You'd think he'd somehow have that sort of homing instinct

but there must have been something, something was driving him forward.

Maybe something he didn't understand.

Something compelled him every day to keep moving.

That was the smell of a tigress.

He was at an age where essentially all he was thinking about was girls.

Meeting girls and making babies.

The scent of tigers behind him is sort of gone

and so he just sort of kept moving, kept moving kind of getting into deeper and deeper water,

but maybe still hoping that he'd come to a place where he could settle down.

Broken Tail never got that moment

because there was no-one else out there.

There were no other members of his kind anywhere on that route.

-Do anything like nilgai or wild boar come in the mustard crops?

-They do.

They do? They can eat them too...

So that's where the Mogyas are going to be?

They guard this field.

Sometimes, I think both Salim and I wonder what

we're doing on this journey, on this trail of a tiger

that left his forest home only to be killed by a train.

But already I feel I'm beginning to understand that the landscape

is not as hostile as I thought it would be.

I'm beginning to understand how he actually managed to make this journey.

Good girl! Good girl!

How far do you reckon we've come today? 20 Ks or so?

About 20km, yeah.

Didn't you do well?

I'm not going to get back on you today, OK?

-That's some spot.

-Wow! Look at this.

That was worth the walk, huh?

This is the place. This is the place.

Look at that.

-Perfect for tonight.

-Would you like some tea first?

I'd love it! No point two people making tea I always say.

Look at tiger here.

It is a tiger.

People with bows and arrows, they're chasing away the tiger.

Look at that,

she's got a cutlass, a machete or something that one.

How old do you reckon these paintings are, Salim?

They are definitely thousands years old.

This place must have been full of tigers when these were drawn.

Tigers are absolutely on the edge.

They have reached critically low numbers and for the most popular animal in the world, if we lose them,

what a sad indictment that is for the human race.

We have knowledge now, knowledge, easy ways of accessing knowledge around the world. We know this.

And to allow it to happen on our watch with that knowledge,

how could you possibly explain that to people in the future?

How could you sit down a classroom full of kids in 50 years time and

explain to them, "Oh, yes, we knew, that tigers were on the edge, oh, but we let them go!"

How could you possibly rationally explain that to anyone in 50 years time? You just couldn't.

Broken Tail and Slant Ear were growing up.

We were constantly worried

that a male was going to turn up and do damage to the cubs.

Their father was hardly to be seen

and new males were moving in as a result.

Now that's a dangerous thing because if a new male moves into an area he can kill the cubs.

The female will come back into cycle and he will father his own cubs.

So there was always this tension.

And then there was a day

when we met Machali,

she was acting strange again, she was acting nervous.

And we had seen male prints in the area and we realised the male prints

hadn't left the area, so he was still there.

This day obviously she decided he meant business and they fought.

It didn't last very long because they can't last very long

because it's very dangerous for both animals.

The cubs were safe. She was a great mother, great mother.

Broken Tail must have had a real search for water,

particularly summer time.

It's a mystery how he even managed to find the water.

I wouldn't mind jumping in there myself!

I'm picking up some of it, but I can't get it all.

He's saying there about three or four kilometres from that village, Manak Chauk, there is a small bridge

-over the small nala, and there is a water hole.

-Yeah.

He was coming back from the Bundi and he saw a tiger crossing a road.

And he get shocked, you know?

It was very close to his motorbike, and...

-This big tiger is walking in the royal style.

-Like he owns the place.

Broken Tail puts the "royal"

in "royal Bengal tiger". Do you think he stopped at the water hole?

THEY SPEAK IN DIALECT

He don't see that. He turn around and run away.

And for ten kilometres he's feeling like he's having a loose motion.

THEY LAUGH

I'm not surprised!

That's the thing about India, people do have a great respect for living things.

Can you imagine in Europe allowing

a great predator to wander freely around the country?

It wouldn't happen.

I'm just staggered that he'd be that calm out this far.

I mean, so far from the park

I thought he'd have become like a fugitive.

And he's still behaving like he's a real Ranthambhore tiger.

It's been great to see what it's like,

the India outside the reserves, outside the protected areas.

Whoops a daisy. You're going that way?

OK. Good idea. Good idea.

This is an old maharajah's place.

-It must have been a hunting lodge or something.

-Looks like.

See the holes everywhere?

It is for the gunshots.

If Broken Tail had gotten here and there was a female here, he'd still be alive today. He'd never have left.

Why would you want to leave?

He could be living happily here now.

Empty place.

Just listen to the sounds.

This is the quietest place I've ever been to in India.

And when you have an area that's remarkably quiet, it means there are few people living there.

And when you have few people living in a place,

it means you have an opportunity to protect that area for wildlife.

And we have to find all the bits of India

that still exist that are like this, grab them now, grab them quickly and put the focus on these places.

Having a little island like Ranthambhore, it has no long-term future.

You have to connect it to another area, and Broken Tail is showing us the way.

'Tiger hunting in India takes on pomp and ceremony...'

This place was owned by the Maharaja of Bundi,

and he entertained all sorts of people, from, you know, Errol Flynn to Lord Mountbatten.

All the Hollywood set used to come here.

That's what people used to do for fun in those days.

These guys shot so many of them.

I mean, they wiped out tens of thousands of tigers all over India.

'Good work! One shot did it!

'He was a big fella, but all fight was gone out of him now.'

They would shoot as many tigers as they could lay their hands on.

They would blast as many as they could, and they'd boast about it.

In some areas, they drove tigers into local extinction.

I remember the last time that the family were together.

Machali had left the cubs and she'd gone hunting.

A couple of hours later, she came back and she started roaring.

She was calling the cubs.

Then we heard a rustle in the bushes behind us,

and she lay down on the road.

And Broken Tail and Slant Ear both came out of the bush

and then started suckling from her.

Of course, she hadn't had milk for well over a year.

This was some sort of amazing bonding behaviour that no-one had ever seen before.

Extraordinary to see these two male tigers

bigger than her suckling from her.

That was the last time we saw the family unit together.

Was there an incident, a natural incident, with a male tiger?

Was there an incident with a poacher?

Maybe Slant Ear was shot and that's why the family split up.

We'll just never know.

How the heck did he get across here?

Never seen anything like this in India before, Salim.

I can't imagine him swimming across this, can you?

No.

I'd say he got here, went down some sort of river bed,

tracked along it and came to some shallow area.

There must be some shallow areas. We should go and see that.

Poor old horses, though. They haven't enjoyed this rocky ground.

-Wouldn't want to push them too much more.

-Either we can walk and...

You can walk? I've only ever seen you walk to your car!

We're getting close to Darra, where Broken Tail spent his final days.

It's going to be a strange feeling to see this place at last.

All that's there is a train track, a village,

and a forest that has somehow managed to survive.

Does he remember the tiger being killed by the train here?

HE SPEAKS IN LOCAL LANGUAGE

There is old lady in the village, Darra village.

They might have seen tiger when they come to collect the wood.

Is she still around, or can we find out...?

WOMAN SPEAKS IN LOCAL LANGUAGE

I think I can understand. She was out woodcutting, picking sticks off the ground, and when she cracked one...

She crack one of the sticks and tiger hear that.

Because tiger was not expecting this lady, so suddenly he heard sound,

and he's shocked to see them, so he run away and she run away.

THEY LAUGH

SHE SPEAKS IN LOCAL LANGUAGE

They says, "We really felt very bad when we get to know about the tiger being killed, because

"he never make any harm and he's such a beautiful animal."

She says, "We trust the tiger like we can trust a human in the house."

And can these ladies put a date on when they last saw him?

SHE SPEAKS IN LOCAL LANGUAGE

She knows when the tiger killed by the train here.

In the daytime she saw him, and the next morning they found him dead.

So you were the last person to see Broken Tail alive, probably.

This is the same chain of hills that stretches all the way to Ranthambhore,

200 miles long,

and this is where Broken Tail ended up.

Every so often you can hear a train. It's quite a busy train track.

He knew that sound so well, but he didn't know to avoid them.

He hadn't learnt that lesson.

Travelled so far. He must have learned so much.

And even for me it was quite a journey.

But he sort of did it all by himself.

He'd no mate.

That's kind of sad.

But to have made it this far,

he was some tiger.

He really was some tiger.

What number did that guy say?

He said this was between 870 and 871.

This could have been the very spot where he came down.

870...

This was the place, Colin.

He jump out from here and...

fall down here.

Why didn't he just jump up there?

He tried to save himself. Maybe he don't have enough time, or...

I've seen tigers jump walls that high,

-many times.

-They do that.

Just think, after all he went through - after his journey, after all the...

hardships he must have faced generally in life - pity that it all ended here.

I shall do some Puja in the memory of...

It was really very sad this time, because he was such a young and such a healthy tiger.

One could not imagine that he would have been killed by that way.

But the tiger, the King of the Forest,

died with the Rajasthan Express, the super-fast train of the country, fastest train.

Everybody was just weeping, nothing to say.

Even doctor was not comfortable doing postmortem, because it was such

an intact body, such a shining body. It was difficult to believe.

It has to be burnt.

So it was given to the flame.

Everybody touched his foot and said, "Good journey to you".

This is really interesting, you know. When somebody dies in India,

human being, they touch the feet before they cremate the body.

So it's the same thing they did with Broken Tail.

And it's really sad for me also.

You know, I am feeling now...

the memories.

He spent the days in front of my vehicle, all day playing and doing...

It's like you are missing

one of your really close friend or family member.

That is really sad. Really sad.

I'd hate to have heard of this, you know, emaciated tiger being found 200 miles away

that kind of wandered into a village because he hadn't found water,

that would've been an awful thing to kind of hear about.

But that's not what I heard about.

I heard about a tiger that had been killed by a train.

And when he died, he was in his absolute prime.

And that gives me a lot of comfort, I suppose.

I'd prefer not to dwell on his death,

but more on how exciting his life was

and how much pleasure he gave to Salim and I, and so many people.

I think Broken Tail's death, in the end

will be one of the most important things he ever did - the way he died and where he died.

Broken Tail has shown us the way.

This is what tigers do, this is what they need, this is where they move to.

They need zones, whole areas that they can wander through.

We need prey in those zones, and I think Broken Tail might end up being an extremely important tiger

that we look back on in years to come and say, "That's the one who started all this.

"That's the one who changed our mind about how we should protect tigers."

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