Billy Arjan Singh — A Life Devoted to Dudhwa

From hunter to advocate

Singh was born on 15 August 1917 in Gorakhpur, the second son of Kunwar Jasbir Singh, and died on 1 January 2010 ^[1]. As a young man he hunted. A 2015 profile recounts that he shot a leopard at twelve and a tiger at fourteen ^[3].

By his own later account, he turned against hunting after shooting a young leopard caught in his vehicle's headlights ^[1]. After serving in the Second World War he settled near Lakhimpur Kheri, at a farm he named Jasbir Nagar ^[3]. In May 1959 he found the land that became Tiger Haven, at the confluence of the Soheli and Neora rivers, and bought it from a politician who had lost interest in it ^[2]. The rivers flooded the farm several times a year, he later said, but the silt made the soil fertile ^[2].

Saving the swamp deer

His first major cause was the barasingha, or swamp deer, of the Sathiana (Satiyana) range ^[1][3]. In 1964, the year he joined the UP State Wildlife Board, he proposed protecting the deer ^[2].

The official record gives the sequence of protection. The UP Eco-Tourism Development Board states that an area of Lakhimpur Kheri sheltering a large population of swamp deer was notified as a sanctuary in 1958, first known as Sonaripur Sanctuary ^[4]. How Singh's proposal of 1964 related to that earlier notification, and to a reported expansion in the 1960s, needs to be checked against the original government notifications.

In the 2000 interview he also claimed a part in having Kishanpur Wildlife Sanctuary declared in 1972 ^[2]. In 1976 he received a WWF Gold Medal for his work on the swamp deer ^[1][3].

The national park

Dudhwa was notified as a national park in 1977 ^[4]. Several accounts credit Singh with persuading Indira Gandhi to turn the reserved forest into a national park of about 520 square kilometres ^[1][3]. A biography's publisher's description dates her approval to 1973 ^[5].

These accounts come largely from Singh's admirers and biographers. The administrative history, including who drafted the proposals, which officials carried them through and how the final boundary was set, has not been fully documented in public sources. The national park was later combined with Kishanpur Wildlife Sanctuary to form Dudhwa Tiger Reserve. The year is given as 1987 by the Wildlife Institute of India's mapping report ^[6] and as 1988 by the UP Eco-Tourism Board ^[4]. Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary was added in 2000 ^[6]. The national park and the tiger reserve are different things, created at different times.

Prince, Harriet and Juliette

Singh's most famous experiments began with leopards. He raised an orphaned male cub, Prince, and returned him to the wild in 1973 ^[1]. To give Prince a mate, he raised two orphaned females, Harriet and Juliette ^[1].

He wrote about these animals in Prince of Cats (1982) ^[1]. A visitor's recollection published in 2018 notes that Prince fathered Harriet's cubs, but that the leopard releases did not all end happily ^[7]. The details of each animal's fate are best read in Singh's own books alongside independent accounts.

Tara

In July 1976 Singh brought a hand-reared tigress cub, Tara, from Twycross Zoo in England ^[1]. The project to return her to the wild at Dudhwa was approved by Indira Gandhi ^[2]. A visitor who saw the arrival recalled her being carried to Tiger Haven on an elephant and filmed as she was released across the river ^[7].

Two controversies have followed Tara ever since.

• Her genetics. Critics described her as an Indo-Siberian hybrid, and some argued she should be removed. Genetic studies in the 1990s found Siberian-type markers in two of 71 Dudhwa tigers sampled. The samples were too few to prove that Tara was the source ^[1][2].
• Her fate. The forest department maintained that she became a man-eater and was shot. Singh insisted that she bred in the wild and that her descendants strengthened Dudhwa's tigers ^[2].

Neither question has been settled by the sources available to us.

The argument with the state

Singh was combative, and his relationships with forest officials were often hostile. In 2000 he accused the department of over-counting Dudhwa's tigers: it claimed 104 where he believed there were no more than 20. He also accused it of failing to stop an irrigation barrage on the Soheli and of letting the swamp deer decline ^[2].

Officials and villagers, for their part, accused him of creating man-eaters ^[7]. A review of his biography by the conservationist Belinda Wright describes his later years as a lonely battle against a department that blamed him for "everything under the sun" ^[8].

A fair history keeps both sides in view. His criticisms forced attention onto Dudhwa, and his experiments raised real questions about the risks of releasing captive-reared predators near people.

Writing and recognition

Singh's books include:

• Tiger Haven (1973)
• Tara, a Tigress (1981)
• Prince of Cats (1982)
• Tiger! Tiger! (1984)
• The Legend of the Maneater (1993)
• A Tiger's Story (1999)
• Watching India's Wildlife (2003)

His life is told in Duff Hart-Davis's biography, Honorary Tiger (2005) ^[1].

His honours include the WWF Gold Medal (1976), the Order of the Golden Ark (1997), the J. Paul Getty award administered by WWF (2004), and the Padma Bhushan (2006) ^[1]. By 2000 he was an Honorary Wildlife Warden, a member of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group and a Padma Shri recipient ^[2]. In 1992 he set up the Tiger Haven Society ^[1].

Why it matters

Singh's life spans the change from the hunting era to modern conservation in the Terai. He shows how one determined, difficult person could put a remote forest onto the national agenda. His most controversial experiments also show why modern conservation now insists on careful science, community consent and strict rules about releasing animals.

What this story tells us about Dudhwa today

The protected status of Dudhwa's sal forests, grasslands and swamp deer owes something to the arguments Singh made from Tiger Haven over half a century. So do the ongoing debates about genetics, conflict and the relationship between the forest department and the people who live beside the forest. His name remains closely linked to Dudhwa.

In closing

Billy Arjan Singh was neither the sole founder of Dudhwa nor simply a maverick. He was a passionate advocate whose instincts were sometimes ahead of his time and sometimes wrong. His life left the Terai a national park, a shelf of books and a set of questions conservationists are still answering.