The Himalayas are the highest range of mountains on Earth.

Below this range, there are foothils containing jungles, forests, rivers, and lakes. These

hills once provided a home to many diverse types of wildlife:

tigers, leopards, rhinoceroses, and deer.

In the last 75 years, however

many of those animals have disappeared. People have cleared the forests to grow crops,

and the animals' habitats has suffered.

Man-Eaters

Usually, it's humans who scare and kill animals,

but it can be the other way around.

About a hundred years ago, a few starving tigers and leopards terrified the people who

lived in the foothills.

Instead of eating other animals, like buffalo and anincpes,

some of these big cars started kiling and eating people.

The cats had names like the Tiger of Chowgarh,

the Thak Man-Eater, the Champarat Tigress, and the Panard Leopard.

Jim Corbett Corbelt, the Hunter

As a small bor, Jim Corbett was fascinated by wildlife.

He taught himself to identify animals and birds by the sounds they made.

Later, Jim became a tracker and hunter.

The government asked him to track and shoot

the man-eating tigers to protect people.

Between 1907 and 1938,

Corbett shot and killed nineteen tigers and fourteen leopards.

He did this on foot, sometimes accompanied by his dog.

and he took many risks to save people's lives.

The first tiger he shot was the Champawa Tiger.

a tiger that killed more than 436 people.

Jim was a hero.

Corbett, the Naturalist

Jim wondered why the tigers and leopards were kiling people.

When he examined the cats that he had shot,

he made an important discovery.

They all had injuries.

Some had gunshot wounds from poachers who hunted them ilegally.

Poaching was common because people could sell tiger skins for deccration

and tiger bones for medicine.

One tiger had a gunshot wound in its mouth,

and its teeth were damaged.

It could no longer attack buffalo and antelopes.

Other tigers had injuries and infections from porcupine quills getting stuck in their skin.

The reason they were eating people was that they couldn't hunt other animals. Corbett

National Park and corbelts Tiger

After his decoveries, Jim became interested in consenation.

He had a new mission: the preservation of tigers.

He gave lectures and inspired people to respect wildlife-

especially the big cats, which he loved and respected.

Two years after he died in 1955,

the oldest national park in India got a new names:

Corbett Nation Park

It's a sanctuary for ligers, leopards, and other endanged animas.

There's even a species of tiger named after Jim called Corbett's Tiger.

No one is sure what the total population of Corbett's Tigers is,

but there may only be 350 worldwide.

Saving the Tiger

In the early twentieth century,

there were about 40,000 tigers in India.

Now there may be as few as 2,000.

But thanks to conservationists like Jim Corbett,

there are now more than 35 tigers reserves in India.

Saving the tiger means preserving the entire food chain.

First, we need to save the tiger's food,

and that means protecting deer and other animals.

Next,we need to save plants,trees,and grassess

so that these animals can eat.

By saving the plants, trees and grasses,

we protect our forests and rivers and all the birds, animals, and insects that live

there.

Very importantly

this means we are saving our water

because,as you know

nothing on Earth can live without water.