NEW DELHI: Following the capture of a man-eater tiger in Bandipur forests of Karnataka last week, noted wildlife biologist K Ullas Karanth has stirred a debate by calling for swift killing of confirmed man-eaters as a policy, to minimize human losses and contain public anger.“We can’t be sentimental about this. Our objective is to save the tiger as a species, not individual tigers,” Karanth, director for science (Asia) at the Wildlife Conservation Society, told TOI.Karanth was reacting to the capture of a male tiger on the edge of the Bandipur Tiger Reserve on Thursday, after it had killed three humans within a week, between November 27 and December 4.The aging tiger was tranquillized by forest officials in the Chikkabargi forests of H D Kote taluk of Mysore district. Two days before the capture, the forest department office was attacked by irate locals after the tiger claimed its third victim, a 55-year-old villager named Basappa.“Forest officials were lucky they could tranquillize the animal. But shooting a man-eater is always quicker, easier, cheaper and more efficient than darting it. Failure or delay in capture leads to avoidable loss of human life. In this case, it was possible to kill the animal before it mauled its third victim,” Karanth said.The biologist, while stressing that it was rare for a tiger to turn man-eater, said delays in capturing a rogue animal only serve to increase public hostility to conservation. “In the long term, we have to focus on saving viable populations of tigers and leopards, for which public support on reserve edges is important,” Karanth said.He said unless the captured animal is young, wild big cats do not adapt well to captivity and live in perennial stress. “Anyway, there aren’t enough vacant slots in zoos to hold problem tigers/leopards,” he added.From Wildlife Conservation Society’s photographic database of camera-trapped tigers, the Bandipur man-eater was identified as BPT-117. The tiger was first photographed in the Moleyur range on March 30, 2004. At that time, it was assessed to be about three years old. Based on that information, WCS said the tiger’s current age was around 12 years.“From locations of the recent human attacks, which are on the edges of this tigers’ range, it appears BPT-117 was evicted from his range after May 2013 by a more vigorous rival. He was in very poor nutritional condition, besides having broken canine tooth and other injuries,” Karanth said.Karnataka’s remarkable success in big cat conservation has meant that tigers have a high density of 10-15 per 100sq km in the Bandipur-Nagarahole forests. This has also led to a high natural mortality and losses amounting to 20% per year.