I think you could have made more of snaring method, which I was told of during recent trip to Sundarbans – snaring a tiger, likely at night, and coming back hours later, seems horrendous. No one can expect it to just sit quietly to wait for darting; cases of animals chewing off a leg caught in a snare are known, and a tiger surely doesn’t have temperament for being caught like this.
I’ve seen a snared panda – thought it had been snared (was told it was just sick, but really it had been caught in wire snare set for deer); after I’d seen snared smaller mammals in market in s China. The panda was in a nature reserve; had been taken to breeding centre; it was the only panda there that looked very angry, and wanting to attack me if it could. I later learned it died within around 3 months, even though staff tried to help it.

Indeed odd if Adam Barlow supposedly researching problem tigers in eastern Sundarbans, where there are no or few such tigers! Snaring and injuring them might, tho, help create problems…

The points raised by Mr. Hossain cannot be dismissed. He has made very cogent and logical arguments to put forth his theories. The scientific community needs to come out of its cocooned mindset and revisit their immobilization data, postmortem reports etc. and try to find out how good is radio-collaring for conservation of critically endangered species.
I would like to add some other scenarios too-
Another serious problem occurring in case of radio-collared female might be the premature culmination of mating. As we all know that during the course of mating the tiger after mounting the female takes a neck bite – now when the tiger mates with radio-collared female two things might happen – i. the tiger while taking this neck bite actually bite the collar instead of the neck and annoyed with the foreign object in its mouth aborts mating without culminating the act– if this is happening it has serious consequence as without new recruits any population cannot continue. ii. In the process of the neck bite the tiger pulls the collar with brutal force that may snap or injure the neck of the tigress. Both these eventualities are possible; therefore, there is a need to subject all dead bodies of collared female tigers to thorough forensic examination.
Apart from the above one more serious issue is about injuries and eventual infection of the neck. Collars are heavy, every time the neck moves the skin gets a wearing down. Injuries in the neck cannot be licked and cleaned by the tiger as its is beyond the reach of tongue or fore paws. Even a very tiny part of exposed skin may soon become infested with maggots and then secondary infection by bacteria, fungus and other microorganisms leading to premature death.

It will be very helpful if you can find some info about if we can get some of those supplies somewhere from Dhaka.

Thank you once again for your excellent photography.

Sincerely

Hashim