Describe the effects of Forest Acts on Kings/British officers engaged in shikar.

While the forest laws deprived people of their customary rights to hunt, hunting of big game became a sport. Kings and British officials were allowed to hunt in the reserved forests. Under the colonial rule the scale of hunting increased to such an extent that various species became almost extinct. The British saw large animals as signs of a wild, primitive and savage society. The Maharaja of Sarguja alone shot 1,157 tigers and 2,000 leopards up to 1957. A British administrator, George Yule. killed 400 tigers. Initially certain areas of forests were reserved for hunting’ only much later did environmentalists and that conservators begin to argue all these species of animals needed to be protected, and not killed.