Some lowdown on the state of forests

In July 2000, Paul Greenough visited the 800 sq.km. Sariska tiger reserve, “being one of the most unlikely reserves in India … that didn't require the Ranthambhorean mix of exceptional leadership, public relations flair and external funding.” Cars and trucks scream 24 hours on two highways streaming through Sariska. Around 200,000 pilgrims enter the core of the reserve every year in September for a glimpse of their gods. In winter, foreign tourists pile on in cars and bikes.

Over years Van Gurjars, graziers and herders, have set up villages in the core and buffer with cattle impacting the undergrowth. Sticking to their work code, Project Tiger personnel have tried and mostly failed to take out Van Gujars, earning the ill-will of all except probably the forest and tigers. About 25 tigers live in the core and the number has remained stable in Sariska for a decade as Gurjars have accommodated tigers over many centuries.

Interspecies accommodation

Paul Greenough in India's Environmental History (a collection of writings on India's ecological past, edited by Mahesh Rangarajan and K. Sivaramakrishnan and published by Orient Blackswan ) suggests “that animal conservation can succeed on the basis of interspecies accommodation rather than of exclusionary separating - a proposition that Project Tiger officials still reject as an unsustainable fantasy.” In 2004, Sariska had no tigers. Project Tiger, backed by little research and built on uprooting human beings living in forests, has been scarred by “bio-ironies”, claims Paul. “The downward drift of South Asia's tiger population outside the Project Tiger reserves is well known to naturalists and fuels their fear that the Indian tiger will crash as did the Bali, Caspian and Javan tigers in earlier decades,” says Paul.

Is there an alternative? Fateh Singh Rathore, the architect of Ranthambhor, was certain humans and tigers could not co-exist. Other wildlifers such as Billy Arjan Singh shared the same conviction. It could be said tiger, elephant and other reserves are nothing but enlarged zoos; it, however, cannot be denied that reserves are minimal, imperfect options for nature to be left alone.

Less than lucid

A second essay by Ann Grodzins Gold and Bhoju Ram Gujar - Wild Life and Kings: Remembered Landscapes in Rajasthan – mentions the Sawar royalty protecting wild pigs for hunts as farmers lost crops to these animals. Tapping “voices from under a stone”, farmers talk of two eras – royalty and the “time of Congress” when India became independent. Under Congress, wild pigs and trees were done away and land put under the plough. A point which perhaps emerges from a reading of the less than lucid articles is that forests in India had no takers

The ruling urban and rural elite in modern India have boxed tribals forever in forests under the Forest Act when young tribals want to own an apartment and a car like you and me. They cannot be denied. In 2011, forests do not hold anything for tribals and one cannot condemn them for chopping forests into farms. Helping poachers earns them a few hundred rupees while the gangs based in cities pocket a few crores selling tiger skins. Their mud homes inside forests are bare. During rains they migrate to cities.

Yet, tribals are better placed to make it than animals in India 2011. Animals are losing out fast.

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