Legacy of conservation, from royals to commoners

It is a rum thing, but it is often the most prolific hunters of wild creatures who turn into their fiercest defenders.

- Roopa Pai

Their reasons range from base selfishness - if we hunt every last wild animal down, there will not be any left for us to hunt - to a deep love and respect for wildlife and forests developed over long years of getting to know both intimately. To the latter category belonged the great tiger hunter from Nainital, Edward James ‘Jim’ Corbett, whose 150th birthday was celebrated last week, on July 25.

Beginning in 1885, when he shot his first leopard for sport as a boy of 10, Corbett would go on to shoot 19 tigers and 14 leopards, all documented man-eaters. Alongside, however, his thoughts turned to conservationism, especially once he had gotten himself a camera in 1921, and began to enjoy the pleasures, and the risks - the early cameraman had to get much closer to his target than the rifleman - of capturing tigers on film. He wrote for the newspapers, denouncing trigger-happy marksmen intent on denuding the Indian jungle of big cats, authored books that lionised the tiger while narrating, in exciting, minute detail, his accounts of tracking and killing man-eaters, and advocated with local administrators to create protected forest areas.