Still on the edge - 'Project Tiger' was launched with much fanfare in 1973 to save 1,700-odd big cats in the country. Forty years later, we still have the same number of tigers in the wild. Where have things gone wrong?

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Still on the edge

By Bittu Sahgal and Lakshmy Raman
The Pioneer
Saturday, October 27, 2012

'Project Tiger' was launched with much fanfare in 1973 to
save 1,700-odd big cats in the country. Forty years
later, we still have the same number of tigers in the
wild. Where have things gone wrong?

The Sariska Tiger Reserve now has five tigers, all
translocated from the Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve, as well
as two cubs. Project Tiger has expanded the original nine
tiger reserves to 40 tiger reserves over an area of
around 46,388.22 sq km in 17 tiger States of which
32,578.78 sq km has notified core/critical tiger
habitats. Critical Tiger Habitats have been identified
and we now have high resolution spatial data on where
India’s tigers are located, their individual populations,
tiger numbers and connectivity with other populations. A
Wildlife Control Bureau has been created. Project Tiger
has metamorphosed into the National Tiger Conservation
Authority (NTCA). Yet, India’s tigers have never before
been this close to extinction. According to the Wildlife
Protection Society of India (WPSI), in 2012 (as of
October) alone, 71 tiger deaths have been reported and 61
in 2011.

For much of the 1990s, India revelled in the conservation
success of the 1970s and the early 1980s while the
country’s forests were insidiously being plundered. For
years only good news trickled out of the tiger reserves.
Documentary films and magazines dutifully reported the
gains of Project Tiger with images of families of the big
cat basking in the security of protected forests. The
drift set in with the demise of Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi in May 1991. Almost immediately large hectares of
forest land were stripped of protection and diverted to
mines, dams, roads and mega-projects.

What little protection still remained by the early 1990s
was due to two-decade-old legislation launched by the
late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. She had rejected World
Bank proposals to clear-fell Indian forests. Not one
Chief Minister, bureaucrat or businessperson dared cross
her path. The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and the
Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 were her initiatives. But
within a year of Rajiv Gandhi’s death the media were rife
with rumours of legislative dilutions.

By the early 1990s, TV had made the world more aware of
the tiger crisis than were most Indians. International
charitable trusts mopped up millions from a sympathetic
public. The tiger proved an evocative fund-raising
symbol. The Indian Government, too, bankrolled Project
Tiger. If even 50 per cent of such funds ever reached the
‘battlefront’, Panthera tigris might not be facing such a
bleak future. But a large chunk was siphoned off by the
swollen bureaucracies of both Government and the
charitable organisations.

Mining, roads, hydroelectric projects, industry and the
usual timber mafias were stifling and tearing apart
sanctuaries and national parks, pitting innocent
communities against the parks in the process. Huge chunks
of forest land were thus diverted for non-forestry
purposes. By the mid-1990s, the tiger had already lost
massive ground. However, it was only in 2004 when the
news of the Sariska debacle broke that the nation awoke
to the fact that despite the early gains of Project
Tiger, its national animal might be lost forever. The
Union Government predictably acted in a knee-jerk manner.
A Tiger Task Force was hastily appointed, but its
constitution rendered it headless. The result: Instead of
highlighting how our tattered protected area (PA) network
was the result of our ‘developmental’ choices and how we
should focus our attention to repair, strengthen and
safeguard wild India, the Task Force barked up the wrong
tree and effectively made this a People Vs Parks issue,
much to the delight of the industrial marauders.

Politicians, quick to recognise a gift, passed the
Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers
(Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 with great
alacrity because it provided them the legal means to
exchange forests for votes. Sensing the mood of the
moment, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF)
meanwhile pushed its own long-standing agenda — to dilute
the Coastal Regulation Zone Rules and the Environment
Protection Act, 1986. So, even as the Prime Minister’s
Office continued to pledge to save the tiger with one
hand, the other was busy waving a green signal to
coalmines to plunder Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and
Maharashtra and hydroelectric power projects to drown
dense forests in the Northeast.

THE STATE OF THE STATES

While the global crescendo to save the tiger grows ever
louder, the forest rug is literally being pulled from
under the tiger’s paws by State governments, most of
which indulge in tokenism.

Politicians, egged on by small and big time businessmen,
are working 24x7 to fragment tiger habitats. Why? Because
they want the billions of dollars in cash and millions of
votes that are theirs for the asking, if they are allowed
to rip up the earth on which tigers walk. Mines, dams,
roads, chemical complexes and nuclear reactors are all
planned inside, or within impact range of tiger habitats.

This is why more than half of all tiger habitats that
enjoyed good health on the day that Project Tiger was
launched in 1973 have vanished. This is why we are
currently debating whether there are just 1,700 tigers
left alive, or under 1,000 perhaps. A decade ago, the
debate was 3,000 tigers or 2,000?

In spite of Forest Departments and Field Directors of
tiger reserves signing tripartite MoUs with the Union
Government, we see few real signs that funds will be more
effectively used. And there is no real indication that
many critical tiger States will start recruiting younger
field staff anytime soon. In our view, perhaps the time
has come to hold Chief Ministers personally responsible —
by name. Civil society should follow their track record
and openly recognise both the good and the negative
impact they have on tigers and wildlife.

CRITICAL TIGER HABITATS

Aware that hard scientific data was vital to the tiger’s
survival, the Wildlife Institute of India and the
National Tiger Conservation Authority set to work on
establishing the ground situation for tigers across
India. Their 2008 report titled ‘Status of tigers, co-
predators and prey in India’, edited by YV Jhala, Rajesh
Gopal and Qamar Qureshi, concluded that the number of
tigers in our PAs ranged between 1,165 and 1,657 animals.

It also reported on habitat losses and stated very
succinctly that tigers were in decline in forest patches
where human disturbance was high and that healthy tiger
densities are seen only in areas with low human
disturbances.

This WII report divided tiger-occupied forests in the
country into six landscape complexes, namely the
Shivalik-Gangetic Plains, Central Indian landscape
complex, Eastern Ghats, Western Ghats, Northeastern Hills
and Brahmaputra plains and the Sundarbans. And in almost
all these landscapes, the story is the same — human-
wildlife conflict, unnecessary development projects,
poaching and habitat degradation are unravelling what
little forests we still have.

The tiger, arguably the world’s most charismatic
predator, is at the centre of two related tragedies in
India. The first involves the rapid slide of the species
towards oblivion; the second the Indian Government’s
apathy towards the impending catastrophe. It is ironic
that the world’s most densely populated subcontinent
should be home to the largest population of surviving
tigers. This has less to do with modern conservation
objectives than with ancient Indian attitudes towards all
living creatures. Ordinary Indians have an innate
reverence for life. They do not demand an ‘eye for an
eye’, even when livestock or human lives are lost. The
tiger is associated with the Goddess Durga and for
millions it would be inconceivable even to consider
harming the animal. Likewise, Lord Ganesh, the elephant
God, is propitiated in almost every Hindu home. The
mouse, the snake, the lion and the peacock are also
venerated. But for the modern poacher this living
heritage has little significance — and dead tigers mean
millions.

At another level the new Indian who has ‘risen above’ the
superstitions of nature worship justifies the rape and
pillage of the tiger’s home in the name of development.
The advent of ‘globalisation’ seems to have ushered in an
ethic among the upwardly mobile which places material
acquisitions at a premium. Outwardly supportive of nature
conservation, most corporate executives lobby furiously
for construction of new airports, dams, roads, thermal
plants and what have you that will cut the heart out of
tigerland.

TIGERS AND TERRORISM

At various periods over the past decade, groups ranging
from the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF),
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), Maoist groups in
Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh,
Jharkhand and Maharashtra, to separatists in Assam’s
Karbi Anglong have been linked with the illegal trade in
timber, wildlife and narcotics. Wildlife contraband is
now a significant medium of exchange for groups acquiring
narcotics. And narcotics and arms almost invariably have
an umbilical link. So dangerous has this situation become
and so powerful the forces operating unencumbered in
Indian forests, that in Palamau and Indravati, forest
officers could not even enter the tiger reserves to
implement the tiger estimation process that took place
across the rest of the country.

It is common knowledge now that the Maoist threat is more
powerful than the Government. Less common is the
knowledge that poachers and Maoists have joined forces to
virtually exterminate both predator and prey from vast
stretches where they operate. Credible reports suggest
that terrorists affiliated to Al-Qaeda have established
bases in Bangladesh and have agents who operate all along
the border with India. These links are believed to be
working with local animal trappers and hard-core poachers
around Kaziranga as well as PAs in Nepal, Myanmar and
Thailand. What is alarming, suggest experts in the know,
is that even small amounts of money promoting insurgency
in countries like Bangladesh can be disastrous because it
brings ‘invisible’ local operatives who might be involved
initially in just bush meat, or petty wildlife crime
squarely into the terror net.

Clearly, this is no longer an issue that merely concerns
‘wildlife lovers’. This is about the internal security of
India. And the sooner our somnambulant politicians and
bureaucrats come to this realisation, the sooner this
cancerous time bomb will begin to be tackled.

CAN TIGER BE SAVED?

Natural India is under assault from ‘development’
projects, tourism schemes, political interference, human-
wildlife conflicts, the illegal wildlife-trade and forest
fires. And still, we see that the tiger holds tenuously
on to existence. It is still not too late for our country
to shake itself from its stupor. If our Forest
Departments and State and Central Governments move from
denial to acceptance, the problems that exist can be
solved, just as we did in the 1970s and 1980s.

We have the largest democracy in the world but to date
not one party or candidate has spoken for forests and
wildlife. The young who would like to ask such questions
are probably below the voting age. Meanwhile, climate
change impacts have already begun to be felt and India’s
food, water and economic security lies threatened.

A long list of to-dos has to be worked on diligently and
immediately. Crucial wildlife corridors must be brought
under the Critical Tiger Habitat umbrella and extended
equal protection. Site-specific conservation plans must
be prepared and implemented in each tiger reserve which
should include steps to reduce human-wildlife conflict
and insurgency as well as outline strategies for
patrolling, tourism, livelihood options for locals and
voluntary relocation of people where required. A complete
overhaul of the Forest Department, which includes
providing salaries on time, high-end training of forest
department staff and filling of vacancies, is equally
vital.

In the past few months, the Prime Minister’s Office is
catching stick for coal block allocations. But it is not
merely how coal was allocated that is the issue, it is
also the very fact that it is being allocated from
forests and other ecosystems without which India has no
future.

The myopia of ‘condoning’ the coal mining at the cost of
rivers, lakes, forests and coasts is visible in the shape
and form of climate change, an ‘inconvenient’ truth that
our Prime Minister’s Office turns a blind eye to in its
haste to push its GDP ambition at the cost of India’s
natural capital. Tiger Reserves, Reserved Forests,
wetlands, grasslands, all are fair game as our nation’s
soils are sold for the equivalent of glass beads of
development. In truth, we are seeing a new form of
colonisation at play in India today, where this
generation is colonising the next. History will not
remember us well. Neither for participating in this
tragedy, nor for the silence of those who merely watch by
the sidelines as the ecological foundation of the
subcontinent is assassinated.

- Bittu Sahgal and Lakshmy Raman are respectively the
Editor and the Executive Editor of Sanctuary Asia

More at:

http://dailypioneer.com/home/online-channel/top-story/104736-still-on-the-edge.html

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

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