(Jim Corbett)
He once guarded a princess who became queen while perched in a Kenyan treehouse. His only hunting companion was a spaniel named Robin. This champion of tigers began his career by shooting them, yet his name now graces Asia’s oldest national park. He understood man-eaters better than any human alive, declaring them “large-hearted gentlemen” forced into tragedy.
Jim Corbett was born in 1875 in India’s Himalayan foothills. Young Edward James Corbett explored Kaladhungi’s jungles, learning bird calls and animal tracks from local trackers. After his father’s death, he left school at 17 to support his family, joining the railways as a fuel inspector. Yet the wild called him back – he mastered jungle lore, later writing: “No man better understands the signs of the jungle”.
Jim Corbett became India’s most feared slayer of man-eaters. Between 1907–1938, Corbett killed 19 tigers and 4 leopards responsible for over 1,200 human deaths. His first target, the Champawat Tigress, had terrorized Nepal and India for years, killing 436 people. Corbett tracked her with 300 villagers – a hunt ending with four rifle shots and a borrowed shotgun. He stressed these animals turned violent only when wounded, old, or starving, once noting: “A tiger is compelled to adopt human flesh through stress beyond its control”.
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Jim Corbett transformed into a pioneering conservationist. Inspired by photographer Frederick Champion, Corbett swapped rifles for cine-cameras in the 1920s. He lectured in schools, arguing tigers must be protected as India’s “finest fauna.” His books, like ‘Man-Eaters of Kumaon’, sold worldwide, thrilling readers while humanizing predators. Royalties funded schools for the blind, and he even bought a village, Choti Haldwani, building a 9km stone wall to protect crops from wildlife.
He co-founded Asia’s first national park in 1936. Originally named Hailey National Park, it became Jim Corbett National Park in 1957. This sanctuary birthed Project Tiger in 1973 – saving Bengal tigers from extinction. His innovations included anti-poaching fences and irrigation canals, proving humans could coexist with nature.
He spent his last days in Kenya, writing. After India’s independence in 1947, Corbett and his sister Maggie settled in Nyeri. There, he served as bodyguard for Princess Elizabeth in 1952, witnessing her become queen from a treetop lodge. He died of a heart attack on April 19, 1955, but lives on through the Indochinese tiger subspecies (Panthera tigris corbetti) and the park bearing his name. As he once wrote: “The book of nature has no beginning as it has no end”
