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A person close to Corbet.A few facts aboutOne man who will never forget Corbett is the feisty Billy Arjan Singh, a far more controversial figure now living out his last years in Tiger Haven, his jungle retreat near Pallia in Uttar Pradesh, close to the Nepal border. Like Corbett, Singh, 87, underwent a dramatic change of heart, hanging up his .275 rifle in 1955 and turning to conservation. Singh used to sit at the feet of Corbett in Nainital, hearing firsthand the stories that would eventually find their way into Maneaters of Kumaon. He later dedicated his own book on tigers to Corbett—the first conservationist—and his lifelong efforts were finally recognised this year when he was awarded the J. Paul Getty award for conservation, together with a cheque for $50,000.

Not everyone was pleased, of course. Singh first provoked an outcry in the 1970s, when he hand-reared big cats and released them back into the wild in a bid to boost dwindling populations. His biggest ‘success’ was Tara, a tigress brought over from Twycross Zoo in Britain. In 1978, Singh released her into the jungle, only for there to be an outbreak of man-eating in the surrounding area. Tara was blamed for the deaths of 30 out of 80 people who were eaten, but Singh always protested her innocence. Even when a park director claimed to have shot Tara and paraded her in front of local villagers, Singh maintained that his beloved animal was still living free in the jungle. To prove it, he cited the appearance, many years later, of a young Siberian-looking cub. Tara had had a Siberian strain in her ancestry and the arrival of her cub proved she was alive. (It also proved that the intergrity of the Bengal gene pool had been destroyed, but that’s another story.)

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