TIGERImages and words by

Andy Rouse / naturepl.com

Mission:

A single chital alarm call pierces through the silence; the call of a frightened animal. It’s dawn in Ranthambore, a very special time to be out on tiger patrol. On foggy mornings like this it’s a cold, dark, mysterious place, making it very difficult to locate tigers. But I can find inspiration in the atmospheric land-scape. We rely on alarm calls from the va-rious deer species, as well as bird chatter, to tell us that a tiger is in the locality. The chital calls again and my excitement rises to a peak; the deer may have sensed a tiger, smelled it or seen a tell-tale movement in the grass...’

I have always had a special affinity with ti-gers. There is something about their total arrogance and their total fragility as a popu-lation that always draws me to spend time with them. I took my first images of tigers working in a zoo while I was still at university, but I always knew I wanted to document them in the wild. Fast forward to today, and the tiger has given me some of the most rewarding wildlife encounters of my life. It is so special to me. Just to see a tiger in the wild takes my

breath away every time, and afterwards I feel vibrant and alive. It is an alarming fact that, as a species, tigers are severely endangered. But the way I see it, great photography is a way to raise awa-reness of tigers and give them an additional PR boost. I do sincerely believe that we can save the ti-ger, and I hope that my emotional connection with these magnificent cats shines through in my images, perhaps inspiring others to love them too.

[Above] Wild tigers are tough to find and even tougher to photograph. They spend a great deal of their time hidden in long grass, their stripey coats helping them blend in to their environment. [Below left] The tigers of Ran-thambore are sometimes seen resting on a fort, catching a breeze. The temperature on this day was over 37C (100F).

Seeing a wild tiger always takes my breath away and afterwards I feel vibrant and

alive.

Ranthambore National Park is one of the biggest and most renowned National Parks in Northern India. Covering an area of 392 square kilometres, it is located in the Sawai Madhopur district of southeastern Rajas-than.Ranthambhore was once a hunting ground for the Maharajas of Jaipur but in 1973, the Indian government started Project Tiger, setting aside an area of 60 square miles as a tiger sanctuary. This area later expanded to become what is now Ranthambore National Park. Today, it is one of the best locations in India to see wild tigers.

Ranthambore is also counted as a famous heritage site because of the pictorial ruins that dot the park. Ranthambore Fort, built in the 10th century, towers over the entire park, standing at 700 feet above the surrounding plains. The grasslands and deciduous forests that characterise the Park are also home to leopards, sloth bears, chital and sambar deer, as well as langurs, Rhesus macaques and a variety of plants, reptiles and birds. But it is the tiger population for which Ran-thambore is best known. Their presence can be felt everywhere. Even when you can’t see them, you know you’re in tiger country.

[Left to right]: Chital deer in deciduous forest; Bengal ti-ger yawning; Cars full of tou-rists watching a tiger; Indian darter warming up at dawn.[Bottom of page] Sunrise over a lake in Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve.

Ranthambore is home to some of the world’s most photographed tigers, each one with a name and unique ID number assigned to it by the forest department. Individuals can also be identified on the basis of their stripe patterns. Like a human fingerprint, every tiger has a unique stripe pattern - and the most easily recognised markings are used to tell them apart.The lineages of every tiger in the park are carefully documented, along with their terri-torial ranges, age and dominance status.Getting to know individual tigers is essen-tial if you are to photograph them well - and they each have their own personalities, repu-tations and legends.

The Tigers ofRanthambore

[Above]: Machali, former queen of Ranthambore; [Right] Krisha T19 with her male cub Arrowhead; [Below right] Adult male Sultan T72; [Below] Noor T39, mother of Sultan.[Left] Individual tigers are iden-tified based on their unique markings and stripe patterns.

I’ve built my career on having relationships with the animals that I photograph. I don’t just regard them as photographic subjects, to me they are something much deeper. There have been a few special ones over the years, but perhaps one of the most well known is Machali, the Queen of Ranthambhore. In her prime she was totally dominant in her territory, fearless, and just plain beautiful.

In her lifetime, Machali has proven herself as a great hunter and mother, but many will remember her first as a fighter. She fought her siblings, her mother, male suitors and her own offspring. She was such a success-ful fighter that she only ever lost in her later years, when age meant that she no longer

had the weaponry, or the desire, for combat. In the above image, Machali (on the right) fights one of her daughters for territory. The extended claws show her intent. At this stage, there is no maternal love, the daughter is competition for food and territory. It was all over in seconds, Machali the easy winner.

Machali

Machali was always a great and fearless hun-ter. But on one particular afternoon, I found her stalking a young Sambar, who was com-pletely unaware of her presence. It’s a testa-ment to her skill that she could stalk across open ground like this and remain undetec-ted. Just look at her shoulders, every muscle is tense, she just exudes power. Every foots-tep was chosen carefully and her eyes never left the Sambar ahead.

Machali’s nickname ‘Lady of the Lakes’ was given to her because of her territory; the lakes around Ranthambhore fort. It is one of the most scenic parts of the Park. One of the reasons why Machali became world-famous was because the wide open space in this area made it easier to see and photograph her than the other tigers in the Park. More than a dozen films have been made about her, and at one point she was the most photographed wild tiger on the planet.

June 2014 was my last time I photographed Machali. We found her limping down to a waterhole late one afternoon in a very iso-lated and lonely part of the park. I could see that her teeth were gone and by her general condition, hunting looked difficult. I was very upset by what I saw, but age comes to us all, of course. Though Machali is still alive, her dynasty will soon end. But I know that her legacy will live on in every corner of Ranthambhore.

To document cubs in the wild is surely the holy grail of tiger photography. I’d taken pic-tures of them in captivity [right], but wild tigers are extremely secretive and cautious when caring for young cubs, rarely bringing them out into the open. I had images of ol-der juveniles in the wild, but I knew I could shine a spotlight on the plight of the tiger if I could get images of wild babies. Cubs will begin to follow their mothers out of the den at around two months of age, but they don’t participate in hunts. They wait in a

safe place for their mother to bring the food back to them. To photograph them at that age wasn’t going to be easy and I would need all the help I could get.Mission: Tiger Cub was something I set my-self in 2014, enlisting the help of my close friends Aditya (‘Dicky’) and Poonam Singh in Ranthambhore. I have worked with Dicky all my tiger career; we spent 3 months colla-borating on my first tiger book ‘Tigers; a Ce-lebration of Life’ and since then, he has been ever present in my quest for tiger images.

Tiger cubs are nervous, and are closely guarded by their mothers. To photograph them is very tough, and often involves many days of frustration, looking at pug marks and trying to work out where they might be.

Wild cubs are the holy

grail of tiger photography

Noor is Machali’s niece and just as extro-vert as her auntie. She has also inherited the quality of being camera-friendly! Her domi-nance over a large territory make her the current queen of Ranthambhore.When I visited the Park in June 2014, Noor had just given birth to her second litter of cubs.

Noor

During a tough two weeks in June 2014, I finally got the opportunity I was waiting for. Noor had given birth to cubs, no more than three months old at the time, and I spent every day, in the fierce heat of the Indian summer, hoping to get a glimpse of them. Noor kept the cubs sheltered in a cave, but as the heat topped 44 degrees Centigrade, I guessed that they would have to drink soon, and cool off.

Suddenly, Noor appeared in the road. She had her cubs with her! One was running around, so she picked it up in her mouth and walked the cubs down to the a shallow pond .

I parked the jeep 150m (450ft) away from the pond and took out my long lens. I’ve photographed tigers from 2m (6ft) away, but if Noor was going to bring her cubs to the pond, I didn’t want to make them nervous. It would be their first time seeing people.

Noor was first in the water. She snarled at it, scanning carefully for crocodiles before letting the cubs follow her in.

I’ve encountered a lot of wildlife but this was perhaps the most magical experience of all. For two hours, Noor and her cubs cooled off in the pond, bathing and playing and drin-king. It was an incredibly rare thing to see, and the fact that nobody else had seen the cubs before made it seem even more special.

The cubs were very playful in the water, and I watched them affectionately nuzzling their mother and clambering over her back as she lay down in the water. Noor kept a watchful eye out for predators as they played.

Once Noor and her cub had enjoyed their lengthy dip, she picked them up and carried them away from the pool. ‘Mission Tiger Cub’ had started with a real bang!

Sultan, Noor’s son, was born in 2012. Unu-sually, he was the only cub in her first litter. In the absence of any siblings, Sultan often played with his mother instead, growing in confidence. When the tourist-laden jeeps showed up, he would position himself between Noor and the encroaching vehicles. Today, Sultan lives independently in his mo-ther’s territory. He is bold and handsome and has a great future ahead of him.

Sultan

In 2015 I returned to Ranthambhore, hoping to find and photograph Noor and her cubs again. But, alas, she had developed a very shy nature and stayed away from the areas of the park where we could go. Fortunately, Ran-thambhore tigers are doing well and another female with cubs the same age, Krishna, was not as shy as Noor.

The first time I ever saw Krisha was in 2008, when she was a cub. She is the daughter of Macahli, and it shows! The image of Machali (above) was taken on that 2008 trip, when Krishna was still a youngster. Now, seven years later, Krishna is fully grown and I can’t help but see the similarity between mother and daughter; the posture of one recalling the other. Now with cubs of her own, Krish-na has come full circle.

Krishna

My peaceful thoughts were interrupted by Ray who whispered «she’s coming Andy». Instantly I knew that he meant Krishna. She strode out of the bush and walked towards our vehicle before sitting down. Our angle was amazing, very flat onto her with the background far behind, she was staring right

down into my lens, it felt like she was boring right into my eyes. I kept my attention fir-mly on my little world, as I was shooting her I saw her turn and call back into the grass and chaos erupted onto our little scene as all three cubs appeared from the grass.

As usual Arrowhead was the boldest and came straight up to nuzzle Krishna, before staring straight into my camera...

After nuzzling mum, Arrowhead gave me an amazing stare.

Arrowhead has a very tight bond with Krish-na and he began playing with her, giving me some of the nicest tiger interaction I’ve seen.

I was smiling from ear to ear. It’s so rare to get this interaction with tigers, and especial-ly with Krishna who goes out of her way to avoid us. The mist started rolling in again and I began to realise that time was actually very short before we would be shooting through it. I just hoped that whatever they were going to do they would do it quickly, I knew it was a very unique and special encounter and didn’t want to miss anything.

Suddenly, two of Krishna’s cubs decided to take centre stage - and what started out as gentle playing quickly degenerated into a full-on fight! Standing on their hind legs, the cubs exchanged blows in a rapid flurry

of punches. I fired on instinct, oblivious to everything else around me. It was an incre-dible moment of rare action, lasting no more than 20 seconds. And then, as quickly as it had started, it was all over!

After a particularly foggy dawn recce, I retur-ned from the park having taken no pictures at all. Ranthambhore is a cold, dark, myste-rious place in conditions like these - and it makes finding tigers very difficult indeed. Most often we rely on alarm calls from deer or langurs to tell us where the tigers are, but even they were silent.By the afternoon, the sun was breaking through the mist and I ventured out again, hoping that my luck was changing. And sure enough, we found Krisha’s cubs resting in some long grass around a lake shore. As I was photographing them, I heard the low

growl of Krishna herself and we backed the jeep away, giving her space to move. A few minutes later, she appeared, striding right out onto the track, quickly followed by her cubs. I almost shouted for joy!Krishna is quite different from Noor, and I could tell that she didn’t much care for vehi-cles and was going to avoid us, so I moved the jeep much further away, along the track. Luckily it paid off, and Krishna began wal-king straight towards me, cubs in tow.My mission to photograph a female and her teenage cubs was off to a great start!

Young tiger cubs start practicing hunting skills early on. They spend the majority of their time playing with their siblings and their mother, which helps them to develop useful life skills such as stalking, pouncing, swatting and climbing.

The tiger is a worldwide and instantly-re-cognisable icon that signifies power, good luck and courage. In the worlds of fashion, entertainment and education, the image of the tiger is used more than any other animal on this planet. But the constant exposure to tigers from an early age means that many people don’t realise how endangered they have now become. Today, only 3,200 tigers are left in the wild, a far cry from the situation a century ago, when 100,000 of these iconic creatures roamed the Asian continent. They are now restricted to just 7% of their former range, fragmented across 13 countries. And when you consider that the count of 3,200 includes six unique

sub-species (Bengal, Indochinese, Sumatran, Siberian, Malayan and South China tigers), the figures become even more alarming.Poaching, habitat loss and conflict with hu-mans are the biggest threats to tigers. They need our help and I don’t want to live in a world where the only place we can see them is in a museum. I want to get more people to love tigers and to understand what we can do for their conservation. It’s in all of our interests to care. Saving tigers saves habitat, benefits communities through sustainable tourism and provides a feel-good factor. It’s a commitment to the future of this planet, for the next generation and the one after that.

Tourism is important for tiger conservation, providing an economic incentive to keep them alive. Tiger guides also monitor the populations, so if a tiger disappears, they’ll know about it.

In January 2015, census data from India re-vealed that the tiger population has risen to 2,226 compared to 1,706 in 2010; an increase of over 30%. And in July 2015, Bhutan re-corded a population of 103 tigers, up from the last estimate of 75. Good news indeed, but we can’t afford to be complacent. We all need to work together to save this magnificent species from extinc-tion. It may seem like a daunting task, but there is definitely hope for the tiger. I really, really believe that.

I’d like to hope that the one person who sees my images, and

is inspired by them, will be one who saves the tiger from extinction

Andy Rouse is a professional photographer, wildlife advocate, and Ambassador for 21st Century Tiger. His book ‘Tigers: A Cele-bration of Life’ has so donated over £8,000 to tiger conservation around the world.

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