The Hindu Business Line : Talking tiger to tots

THE world has gone wild over the tiger, says a report on a global poll taken by TV channel Animal Planet. It is the world's favourite animal, according to the poll that comes at a time when Project Tiger in India is in its 30th year.

Keep the tiger alive and the forests will breathe. It may be useful to remember that many experts did not think the tiger would cross over into the 21st century, but the tiger has.

Over the last few years, the Kids For Tigers (KFT) programme has been trying to teach schoolchildren facts about tigers. Started by the Sanctuary magazine and funded by Britannia Industries (now Complan), KFT has been able to relay the message to a few thousand kids across Mumbai, Chennai, Amravati, Patna, New Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalaore.

One sat through a long session at the Borivili National Park over the weekend as the young men and women who run the programme debated the finer points. For them it has been a tough job getting across to kids as the teaching community in general is more cued into drilling the regular syllabus.

Sister Manorama from Chhattisgarh is now working in Patna on the KFT programme as a co-ordinator. She has been able to make her way into English-speaking schools in the city to talk about tigers. "After the recent split-up of States, the Valmiki forest is the only one in Bihar," she informs as she prepares to play her CD on the work being done in Patna. One shot which impressed the crowd was the big rakhi that school kids had tied to a tree trunk in the city.

Most, if not all, of the co-ordinators are in the 20 to 30 age group and women like Sister Manorama are not about to give up despite the reluctance of the teachers to classes on conservation. Geeta Mahadevan in Adyar, Chennai, has been pushing the Tiger mantra to Tamil-speaking municipal schools by getting a few teachers on her side. "See, there is no other way as Chennai is quite insensitive to environment and animals. I request the teachers to give me a few minutes to talk about forests and wildlife, and the kids generally like it, " she told this writer.

Perhaps, Imran Siddiqui from Hyderabad is having a rough time as the city does not bother. He has worked in the forests of Andhra Pradesh and is quite aware of the Naxal problem. Naxals and the police suspect wildlifers like Imran when he tries to defend the few forests in Andhra Pradesh. The Naxals have been distributing forestland to villagers when it would have been better if they had been resettled outside the forests. This alternative has worked in Melghat and Tadoba where Kishor Rithe is in charge. "One does appreciate the land hunger. But villagers will suffer the most when forests disappear. But this fact is not appreciated by the Naxals while for the police it is just another law and order problem," Imran told one.

He is working under near impossible conditions. Most KFT literature is in English, making it difficult for kids in municipal schools studying in the local language. At present about a lakh school kids have come under the KFT programme, and if all goes well 2005 could be better.

On Sunday morning, Anish Andheria took us on an early morning walk down the Silonda trail in the Park and one was impressed by his communication skills. Every five minutes, he would stop to explain the trees, flowers and birds with some fine imitation of birdcalls thrown in. For about two hours this writer was back in school like any school kid picking up every detail, which today he has promptly forgotten.

Everything was fresh as Anish spotted a signature spider on the branch of a tree. For this writer it was all new. Anish strongly spoke against relocating captured leopards from one forest to another as each leopard has its own home or territory and shifting the animal only hurts. "Leopards, like other wild felids, have very strong homing instincts and are known to travel up to 100 km to return to their site of capture," writes Vidya Athreya in the latest issue of Hornbill.

To keep track of the leopards caught in Junnar and released in far-off protected areas in Maharashtra, life-long identification chips have been inserted into the animals. "So far, three animals of the 19 translocated from Junnar have been re-trapped at their site of release and their place of origin could be confirmed because of the chip," Vidya adds.

On the trek one halted for a few moments to take in the sight of a few dewdrops, like teardrops, hanging in a line from the bare branch of a tree. That image will keep me going for quite some time.

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