By Gautam Pandey
Op-Ed
The Pioneer
http://www.dailypioneer.com
Wednesday, November 7, 2012

In protecting the big cat, we protect the forest and all
those that live within it. We protect our rivers and the
groundwater. We protect the life-cycle of this planet
itself. If we can’t do that, we can write off our future,
and the future of coming generations

Forty years after the inception of Project Tiger, the
population graph of the big cat looks more like a graph
at the daily stock exchange! Somehow, in spite of the
best intentions and efforts from the Government, non-
Government organisations and even individuals, the
tiger’s future still remains a question mark, with more
than a few opinions out there predicting total extinction
within the next 10 to 20 years.  This is of course, after
all, only an opinion, but one which could become
frighteningly true. It’s not really a matter of getting
the date right of when the tiger will go extinct, but the
fact that it will be wiped out eventually — unless  we do
something now. With hugely popular campaigns that went
viral like Save the Tiger, the word most certainly is
‘out’ there, but that’s just it —  word out there. The
action is missing still.

Thanks to years of constant broadcasting of the issue,
the challenges of tiger conservation are public
knowledge. Poaching, habitat destruction, poisoning are
what we’ve all heard quite often. Awareness is at an all
time high and everyone knows the Jungle bachao, sher
bachao (save the forest, save the tiger) chant. But there
still remains that elusive gap between information and
action.

Since the last tiger census in 2011, India has already
lost over a 100 tigers to poaching. Maharashtra, which
has 169 resident tigers (2011 census), went on high alert
earlier this year when a tip-off of a poaching contract
was received. There was literally a price put on the head
of 25 tigers and many lakh rupees had exchanged hands as
advance payment. The scale and the audacity just goes to
show what the tiger is up against. Just a few months ago,
a tigress was poached in the Itanagar zoo. The poachers
tranquilised her and then hacked her to pieces. What is
even more shocking is that this not the first incident in
the zoo. In 2006, three tigers and a leopard were
poisoned. One tiger died, while the other two other
animals survived. A special tiger task force, shoot on
sight orders and a Schedule I status for the tiger have
not been a good enough deterrent. (Schedule I is the
highest protected status for an animal in India under the
Wildlife protection act of 1972.)

The ‘value’ of an apex predator like the tiger goes far
beyond what is obvious to our eye. Sure, we’ve all had
the life- cycle image from our school textbooks imprinted
on our brains, but what is so simply illustrated is
multi-layered and complex. The water cycle is at the very
centre of all of this. Without it, everything as it is
would cease to exist.

As humans, we’ve taken far beyond our fair share of the
planet, and the delicate balance of nature we often speak
about won’t just tip — it will spiral. We’ve already
witnessed three sub-species of the tiger lost to
extinction; others are on the brink.

In 2010, I had the opportunity to attend the Tiger Summit
in St Petersburg ,and it was really a coming together of
all the tiger nations. Ministers, tiger experts,
celebrities and individuals who cared or worked for the
tiger, were there. Each country made a presentation and
announced its commitment to doubling the tiger population
by 2020. It was a huge event covered internationally,
with celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio adding glitter to
it. It was at this event where I met a local activist who
was campaigning to save the forests in Russia that were
threatened by logging, mining and oil exploration. She
was desperate to get this information to President
Vladimir Putin, and kept saying: “It’s not only the
tiger, we have to save the forest”. She is right. We need
to save the forest to save the tiger. It’s a beautifully
simple plan that will take all the positive intention on
the planet to execute.

Unfortunately, we already have examples of what happens
when the tiger disappears. The island of Bali, which was
home to the Balinese Tiger, stands as evidence. Being an
island, Bali only had a local population of tigers with
no migrating animals coming in or going out. The last
recorded tiger was shot in September 1937, and after that
Bali lost its forests to agriculture. All that remains
now are fields and an economy that is floating on
tourism. Fresh water is a huge issue in Bali. Extensive
deforestation and over-consumption of water by huge
resorts have drained the fresh water resources of the
island. With the majority of the forests gone, the rivers
and the groundwater are drying up.

This has happened to many small islands and isolated
communities in human history and the most well-known
example is that of Easter Island in the south-eastern
Pacific Ocean.

The forests of Easter Island were almost completely
deforested by its people. What followed was complete
destruction and degradation of the eco-system over a
period of time. Agriculture was reduced because of soil
erosion and fishing wasn’t possible as there weren’t any
large trees left to build boats. The lessons of history
are quite clear in what we can expect if things continue
the way they are. To protect the forests and all those
that live within it, it is crucial for a ‘happy human
buffer’ to exist around such forests. Communities that
live close to the forests have to be given special
benefits and the support to move beyond the basic levels
of existence. With a huge tourism industry around the
‘tiger’, (which we witnessed recently when tourism was
banned in all tiger national parks), the benefits of this
economy barely trickle down. There are people and NGOs
who are doing great work at the ground level and have
made a difference. These have been important but small
victories, with individuals and groups doing the best
they can, and quite often being driven by their own
passion and their own resources.

The crisis of the vanishing tigers is far from over, and
it will need a change in perspective and the collective
will of the entire nation to turn the situation around.
That’s not impossible by any means, but it’s still a task
that needs to become our mission. This is an excerpt from
the Mahabharata, which was written around 400 BC:

“Do not cut down the forest with its tigers and do not
banish the tigers from the forest. The tiger perishes
without the forest and the forest perishes without its
tigers. Therefore, the tigers should stand guard over the
forest and the forest should protect all its tigers.” Are
we paying any heed to the advice. Unfortunately, the
answer is a big “No”.

More at:

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/52785-more-at-stake-than-...

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

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