Deep in the Vindhyan Mountains of Madhya Pradesh in India are the thick forests of Bandhavgarh, where wild tigers still roam.

Named after an ancient fort that is still perched high above it on jagged cliffs where vultures soar, India's Bandhavgarh National Park now sits on land that was once a hunting reserve of the royal family of Rewa. Today, more than 250 species of birds and mammals are protected within the park's 450-square kilometers of grassy plains, bamboo forests, steamy jungles, wooded mountains and reed-covered wetlands. There can be found Kakad barking deer, chinkara gazelles, nilgai antelopes, wild boar, foxes, striped hyenas, peacocks, chestnut-headed bee eaters, chattering macques and langur monkeys -- and at the last census, 40 remaining Bengal tigers.

Clemson graduate Peomia Chela Lee recently returned to her home in Eutawville after spending three months as an intern naturalist at the Bandhavgarh Jungle Lodge, tracking those tigers.

"It's fascinating -- no two tigers have the same exact pattern of stripes, and the markings on each of their individual faces are like fingerprints," Lee said.

Each morning at dawn, Lee said the resident naturalists and any interested lodge guests would set off -- sometimes by Jeep, other times swaying in teak howdahs on elephant back -- while the sun was still rising above the misty jungle.

"Elephants can go places Jeeps can't," she said. "You're more likely to see a tiger."

Elephants are also one of the few things in the jungle that tigers respect and defer to, Lee said.

"One evening, we were in a ravine watching B2, one of the dominant males, resting up on a cliff after a kill," she said. "Unexpectedly, he began stalking down -- right towards us. We couldn't back up. We couldn't go forward. We just sat there, with our hearts in our mouths, in a kind of primal terror.

"Fortunately, we weren't his prey, and he went on by us."

Beautiful, regal and magical, the tiger is becoming increasingly elusive and scarce, Lee said. More than half of the world's remaining tigers live in India, but their numbers have been declining steadily.

"My main duties at the lodge included helping educate visitors about the importance of conservation, especially tiger conservation," Lee said.

The latest numbers, released by the National Tiger Conservation Authority in 2008, showed only 1,411 tigers in the entire nation, with 832 tigers killed between 1994 and 2007 and undocumented kills ranging to an estimated one tiger killed per day.

Lee first became aware of the tigers' fight for survival during a 2006 field study for her Clemson University coursework on biodiversity and conservation.

"Poaching, poverty and population," Lee said. "These are the real threats to the tiger's continued existence. India's population is exploding, but the forests only shrink."

During the months when the park's naturalists are active, the tiger population is largely protected, she said.

"But during the monsoon months, from July to October, the park is closed, and poachers strike," often hiring poverty-stricken local dwellers who earn more from the pittance they're paid for one kill than from six months of farming, Lee said.

Those running the highly organized illegal tiger trade make huge sums, selling every part of the animal -- from its luxurious skin to bones and eyes, whiskers and claws, teeth, brain and blood for various medicinal, magical or aphrodisiacal purposes. And in the past, international governments have traditionally looked the other way, more concerned with their nation's economic growth and profit than conservation.

Happily for the tigers, naturalist programs such as the one Lee participated in at Bandhavgarh Jungle Lodge have begun to turn the tide, and the tiger population in the area, which now has the highest density of tigers in the country, has begun to increase.

"The lodge's motto is 'Conservation via Tourism,'" Lee said. "The more eyes on the tiger, the better -- and through education, we can help turn poachers into protectors of the parks."

Lee's solo trip to the jungle this year was an individual undertaking without a sponsor.

Lee is currently at home in Eutawville, studying for her Medical College Admission Test, which she plans to take this summer, and she is looking forward to practicing osteopathic medicine after graduating medical school. But she hasn't forgotten the tigers.

"I'd love to go back," she said.

"There's so much more work to do, and being there has blessed me in ways I can hardly describe," Lee added, listing a stronger faith and appreciation for family as emphasized in Indian culture as two of her marked gains.

"Being there also really opened my eyes to a greater appreciation of what I have here where I am and what I can do to help. A lot of the news today centers on what we don't have as a nation, or what we lack," she said. "This trip taught me to really count the blessings I do have every day."

For more information on the tiger's plight and ways to help, contact the Environmental Investigation Association at usainfo@eia-international.org or the Wildlife Protection Society of India at wpsi@vsnl.com.

T&D Correspondent Diane Gainer can be reached by e-mail at bcdthinktank@yahoo.com. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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