Video example of how tourists can annoy tigers

It is the best I can do as the video quality is poor. 😢😒

This is a short Twitter video. It is not a great video, but it does make a clear statement about tourists interfering with tiger behaviour and irritating tigers. This video was probably captured in one of the many Indian tiger reserves and you initially see the camera focused on the bushes. After a little while, the tiger rushes out towards the vehicles.

Sometimes, our ‘too much’ eagerness for ‘Tiger sighting’ is nothing but intrusion in their Life…🐅#Wilderness #Wildlife #nature #RespectWildlife #KnowWildlife #ResponsibleTourism
Video: WA@susantananda3 @ntca_india pic.twitter.com/B8Gjv8UmgF

— Surender Mehra IFS (@surenmehra) November 27, 2022

The person operating the smart phone capturing the video is so struck by the aggressive approach of the tiger that they are unable to continue filming and the camera pans left and then it comes back to the tiger who then decides to retreat.

It is a statement by the tiger that the tourists should go and leave his world. This is his environment. And it's known that intrusions by tourists can affect tiger behaviour to the point where they don't breed as well as they should.

This is obviously vitally important to conservationists because there are already too few tigers in the world and tiger reserves are meant to be safe places for tigers to procreate and increase tiger numbers. Although, arguably, tiger reserves are inherently too small to allow a sufficient number of tigers to populate them in order to make the group viable as a breeding group.

Inbreeding of wild cats can lead to extinctions in the wild due to unviable population sizes

There is a minimum number of tigers in any group which is viable and below which they can be inbreeding which can lead to sterility and inbreeding deficiencies in health.

As you can see the game reserve manager who makes the tweet states that sometimes when tourists are too eager to see a tiger it can be an intrusion on the lives of these iconic and precious wild cats.

Tigers seriously stressed by armies of camera carrying tourists in tiger reserves.

This is a constant difficulty which the Indian authorities have to face. The question is what a reasonable balance between is allowing tourists to come into tiger reserves and thereby help fund the reserves whle allowing tigers to behave normally.

From my reading of this discussion, the maximum number of tourists has been reached and perhaps already there are too many in the reserves. There is an argument that there should be nobody in the reserves at all and therefore the entire funding should come from central funds with no contribution from tourists.

Here is the same video as a backup to the one above.