Story of Cats and Kings

Chandrabhal Singh, the petitioner in the case of the translocation of T24, tiger Ustad, surrendered his fight today at the steps of the Supreme Court. In response to the Rajasthan High Court's dismissal of his petition questioning the processes of translocating T24 from Ranthambore National Park on the night of May 17, 2015 post the mauling of gatekeeper Rampal Saini on May 8, said to be the tiger's fourth human kill. He was emotional and distraught as the apex court ruled, "A human's life is more important than a tiger's".

It was the sixth court whose doors he had knocked on. Singh has neither fight, nor resources left in him. "India is no place for tigers," he said, continuing his claim that India has no true tiger experts with PhDs or peer-verified studies on the big cat. But no one was listening and he has already been written off as the madman holding the placard announcing doom at the side of the road.

Whether this cat or another, this petitioner, or another tomorrow is dismissed, in the relief of dismissal, what has passed is the nuance of the ruling.

A human life is more important than a tiger's.

And while a cat may indeed smile at a king, at the end of the day, one is a pet and one is its benefactor.

Never before has a ruling laid it all so bare. At the end of the day, in all our conservation efforts, we are the benefactors, and the beasts privileged to receive our attention to their survival; a survival, some would argue, which we endanger ourselves.

Which brings the practice of conservation back to the question: why do we conserve at all?

Environmental ethicist Mark Sagoff poses the question, "How is saving an animal any more obligatory than saving bits of thread spooled into a giant ball?" Conservation becomes valuable not because a species has economic value, but despite its lack of one he goes on to note. "A conservation ethic does not assert that society should preserve just to the extent it is efficient to do so. On the contrary, it asserts that we are obliged to appreciate, respect, and protect the intrinsic properties of nature that are magnificent in themselves," he says. He compares saving things despite their value to voting, in such that a single vote will not in itself decide the outcome of an election. And yet each vote counts. The value of the individual vote is thus meaningless. And yet the larger outcomes are not.

The apex court ruling has assigned today a bottom line to conservation.

In the battle between man and beast, let us not fool ourselves, no matter how much funds we raise, how many parks we open, species we protect or resurrect, it is for our favour and pleasure, and not for its own sake. We conserve because it is ethical for us to do so. It ignites our nobility. It allows man to play god. We play the game as though the other side, too, has a game to play.

But in the end, it is clear, this match is fixed. Man will win. Every time.