The Hindu Business Line : Saving the tiger

One of the greatest challenges in tiger conservation is the man-animal conflict caused by human encroachment in forests. The only way to resolve the situation is to create sanctuaries where there is no human presence.

— R. Balaji.

On its last legs?

Lyla Bavadam

The inclusion of the tiger in the Union Budget was a big surprise, but once the initial euphoria passed and the tiger crisis was measured against the grant of Rs 50 crore, there has been a sense of indignant dismay. Not just against the one-time grant of Rs 50 crore but also to the inconsistencies that conservationists have to battle.

A nation with a trillion dollar economy makes a one-time grant of this meagre an amount for a species that has suffered decades of wilful neglect has to ask itself if that is all it takes to protect India’s national animal? Is the Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, aware that India is one of the last refuges of the tiger and that a huge global network thrives on poaching it for its body parts? And that the Java, Bali and Caspian tiger species have already vanished and the South China tiger does not have a bright future? Surely, the Finance Minister knows it cost Rs 13 crore to carry out the tiger census that he was quoting from? How far would Rs 50 crore go?

For a holistic balance

Important as it is, there are other dynamics in conservation and Mr Chidambaram’s grant has served to highlight them. A brief list would contain state support for wildlife issues; legal action against poachers and illegal hunters; total observance of the rights of the sanctuaries with zero tolerance for violations. Among others, the preservation of existing habitat, repossession of encroached habitat, creation of new habitat and contiguous forest corridors.

The key is habitat protection that nurtures a stable prey base which ensures predators stay in their natural environs. This will bring about a holistic balance which will do more for the safety of the tiger and every other living creature than any other human formulated plan.

Man-animal conflict

So where is the hitch? Unfortunately, the passing of the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 is in direct conflict with this simple conservation solution. The Act gives forest access rights to tribal people (and, unwittingly, to others who will misuse the Act).

At present, one of the greatest challenges in tiger conservation is the man-animal conflict caused by human encroachment in forests. The only way to resolve the situation is to create sanctuaries where there is no human presence. This would mean the relocation of some of the estimated three lakh tribal and other people living in 28 tiger reserves. However, the Act prevents them from being relocated except at a price. Thus, money that is budgeted for tiger conservation goes into human relocation.

As always, conservationists have to accept a fait accompli and come up with solutions to problems not of their making. In this case, it is the forest dwellers who have to be incorporated into the conservation plan. The strategy is to engage them in conservation work, thereby giving them a steady source of income that otherwise they would very likely have been persuaded to earn via poaching.

At the back of every conservationist’s mind is the knowledge that this plan is a waste of time. It would work in the long run but the timeframe for saving tigers is a short one. It is morally unacceptable to trifle with the life of a species just because populist thinking says people who were once used to a forest lifestyle should continue to have rights to this even though they no longer follow that lifestyle.

Death warrant

When put in the balance with the extinction of a species, the relocation of people who no longer even follow the lifestyle of their ancestors is a small price to pay. Some facts need to be accepted without argument. The tiger occupies just 4 per cent of land (that is, protected areas). On this 4 per cent of land live the existing populations of reproducing tigers. They are the future of the species and by giving legal sanction to human ingress into their last sanctuaries we are signing a death warrant. There is absolutely no logical or moral reasoning to this.

“Up for sale”

The tiger is up against more than just poachers. The Tiger Task Force report showed that about 80 per cent of India’s tigers live in the Western Ghats, Central India and the Terai.

These are the very regions which have been “put up for sale” by the government under the guise of so-called development.

Prime wildlife habitat and pristine jungles in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh have been lost to corporations which see land, forest, and water as resources to be exploited.

It is the government’s handling of these regions that makes their intentions suspect not only for tiger or wildlife conservation but even for tribals.

The same tribal people that have been promised forest land were ousted from their lands in favour of Special Economic Zones, large mining companies, big dams, etc., thereby exposing policy inconsistencies towards tribal people.

Pugmark census

Tigers are probably the most abused inhabitants of India. No other community or species has had the misfortune of numbering less than 2,000 presently from a total of about 40,000 a century ago. Habitat destruction, poaching and blatant negligence by the government have all led to a decimated population. No one knows just how many tigers there really are. Till recently, the tiger census relied on the pugmark method, a technique that has come in for considerable criticism.

Five years ago the last vestiges of credibility of the pugmark census fell apart when it was revealed that the Sariska tiger sanctuary had no tigers instead of the 26 it was supposed to have. The brighter side to this was that the government was forced to appoint the Tiger Task Force.

It chose a globally accepted method of statistical sampling and came up with the current figure of 1,411 but even this is not a definitive figure because the Task Force’s census was unable to survey some regions of central and south India and the Sunderbans. Thus, there is reasonable hope that that there are more tigers in India than a mere 1,411.

This is encouraging; it is also a reminder that too often in wildlife conservation far too much hangs on hope.

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