From prernasinghbindra@YAHOO.CO.IN Sun Oct  3 14:18:35 2004
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 13:15:22 +0100
From: prerna bindra 
To: nathistory-india@Princeton.EDU
Subject: a story on [project tiger in The Sunday  Pioneer


    [ Part 1, Text/PLAIN (charset: ISO-8859-1 "Latin 1")  81 lines. ]
    [ Unable to print this part. ]

    [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ]
    [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set.  ]
    [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]


The Lost Kingdom

Royal, charismatic and critically endangered, the Royal Bengal tiger was
doomed when India took up the world's biggest conservation initiative,
Project Tiger. Prerna Singh Bindra reviews the project as it commemorates
three decades in an attempt to answer the question: Does the tiger have a
future?

Two of the most profound images of the Royal Bengal tiger I carry are of
animals unseen. To me these represent the precarious future of this royal
species: Grim yet not without hope. Powerful yet helpless. Numerous yet
alone.

I was huddled around a fire at the Betla forest guest house at Palamau
Tiger reserve on a bitterly cold night with assorted forest guards and
trackers when the still night air carried from afar the unmistakable call
of the tiger. Aaaaaauuungh, aaaauungh... Continual, persistent, lonely,
unanswered. We fell silent, unable to delight in this sign of the tiger,
reflecting instead on the doomed fate of Betla's only tiger, Rani,
calling for a mate. She will not find her suitable boy. There are no male
tigers around for Rani to perpetuate their kind. With her will die the
last tiger of Betla, one of the best protected areas of a fragmented
Palamau. Rani represents the biggest fear for the tiger as they get
pushed further and further into isolated pockets inbreeding and shrinking
into isolated populations.

I remember another time, another place. I was at the Chilla range at
Rajaji National Park, not a designated tiger reserve but definitely its
domain. Atleast it was, till the Gujjars took over and occupied huge
tracts of the sanctuary. I took in the devastation - the stream reduced
to a mere trickle, trees hacked, the grasses worn out and rubbish
carpeting the floor. After a long patient process, the Gujjars were
rehabilitated. I walk through the same land a year later. Yesterday's
scars had been painted over by nature, my eyes met a rejuvenated forest;
shady trees, stream gushing with water and cheetal munching on tall
grasses. Prospective meal had lured the carnivore, I traced the pugmarks
of a tigress with tinier prints dutifully following behind. A mother with
cubs. The tiger had reclaimed its home. Hope was not dead.

Going back to history, there was a time in the beginning of the 18th
century when tigers were so numerous there was a doubt whether man or
tiger would survive. A hundred years later, it was clear that Panthera
tigris had lost the battle against Homo sapiens. The 40,000 tigers at the
beginning of the 19th century had crashed to a mere 1,800 by 1970.
Pre-independence, the tiger was the prize trophy of royal hunts. The
Sarguja maharajah had bagged over 1,100. In a free India the realm of
royalty and the sahibs had become a happy hunting ground for anyone who
could wield a gun - from dollar tourists to the local hero with a desi
katta. Nets were laid, traps were set, shots were fired, trees were
chopped, forests were burnt.

The tiger was doomed.

Then, the big cat found a powerful saviour in the late Prime Minster, Mrs
Indira Gandhi. When advised of the precarious position of the tiger, she
took up the cause with a personal passion. Gandhi enforced a ban on tiger
shooting, piloted the Wildlife Protection Act and spearheaded the birth
of Project Tiger in 1973. Habitats were identified and nine tiger
reserves declared to protect 16,399 sq kms.

The reserves were sacrosanct and the tiger flourished, its numbers
doubling to 4,000 in the next 15 years. The euphoria died in 1990s, and
two decade of Project Tiger celebrations were marked with despair. Wild
tigers were being massacred to feed the demand for tiger skins and bones
- just one brewery in Taiwan was illegally importing 2,000 kgs of bones
for tiger bone wine and India, the main raw material source. The impact
of this macabre trade were felt in Ranthambhore, population dipped from a
healthy 45 to less than 20. Would the tiger survive this crisis?

It has. The biggest success of Project Tiger has been that it has saved a
species condemned to extinction by the end of this century. And by
protecting its habitat the project has served as an umbrella under which
numerous other species survive.

Dr Rajesh Gopal, director, Project Tiger is cautiously optimistic, "Wild
tigers are still with us, consequently so are its forests and all species
living there," says he. Explaining his point, Gopal cites the example of
the barasingha whose future was questionable when protection accorded to
Kanha saved the deer.

But Gopal doesn't shy from admitting that the tiger survival graph is
under strain. Numbers have slipped from the 1980s. A fair estimate of
wild tigers in India would be 3,500. Though cynics counter that the
census is a mere numbers game.

Worryingly, half of this population is outside the reserves where human
interference is considerable, habitats severely degraded and natural prey
scarce. The predator is pushed to hunt livestock, and on the rare
occasion, man. The consequences can be fatal, vengeful villagers poison
the invasive tiger. Living beyond protected boundaries also means the
feline vulnerable to poaching and other disturbances. On September 14, a
young male tiger was killed by a speeding vehicle ten kms outside Tadoba
in Maharashtra.

It is these 'outsiders' that has Gopal concerned. "It is crucial that
such tiger habitats come under the purview of the project," suggests
Gopal. Another fear is the isolation of small tiger populations islanded
in far flung reserves.

"Most reserves have fewer than 50 tigers, not a biologically sustainable
number," opines wildlife biologist Dr Raghu Chundawat.

The reserves have lost their holy status and even that one per cent of
tiger land out of India's huge land mass has been invaded by destructive
development projects.

To give just a few examples: Sariska has been ravaged by soapstone and
marble mining to meet the demand for talcum powder and home furnishing,
Manas in northeast India harbours militants instead of tigers and rhinos,
while poachers are decimating the rich wildlife of Namdapha and
Pakhui-Nameri in Arunachal. Law enforcement in these remote tiger habitat
is negligible. Both Nagarjunasagar and Sunderbans are threatened by
nuclear reactors on the edge of the forest, while the later has a
grandiose, ecologically suicidal tourism project. Some reserves may as
well be written off, like Palamau, Nagarjunsagar and Indravati which are
more in control of naxalites than forest officials.

P.K.Sen head of the Tiger Conservation Programme, WWF, India adds the
country's most celebrated tiger reserve to the Crisis List. "Ranthambhore
is tiny, fenced in by a burgeoning population, degraded by livestock and
its isolated population of about 30 tigers face an uncertain future. We
need to think, and fast. Should we be wasting our limited resources on
such doomed islands or invest in more viable and contagious habitats?"
ponders Sen.

"Land is premium and the only land in India which has not been used or
rather abused is forest land. Everyone wants it: builders, miners,
industrialists, farmers, and they will bend every law in the book,"
points out Sen, emphasising the need for a land use policy. "We have lost
50 per cent of potential tiger habitat since independence and the trend
continues," he warns.

Poaching is another threat, the western world covets striped skins for
rugs, while the Far East brews the bones to cure an ailing ulcer or a
sagging libido. Belinda Wright, director, Wildlife Protection Society of
India warns that we are sitting on a time bomb, "There have been too many
seizures of late. Wildlife crime has become an organised and much more
lucrative business with relatively fewer risks. And we are in a denial
mode," she warns. To give just one example a batch of 32 tiger skins was
recovered in Tibet recently and investigations identified India as the
source country. "That's one percent of our wild tiger population," mourns
Ashok Kumar, trustee, Wildlife Trust of India.

The problems are complex: India has just two percent of the world's
forest resources under pressure from nearly 20 percent of the world's
human and livestock populations; a small, ageing, unmotivated and
resource-starved forest force up against well-armed, cash-rich poachers.

Given this bleak outlook, will the tiger survive or is it an animal
without a future?

The good news is that there are few who have written the tiger off. The
world's most charismatic animal is fairly adaptable to its changing
environs and a prolific breeder. Give it wild spaces, protect it fiercely
and the tiger will thrive. Stresses renowned wildlife biologist, Dr
George Schaller, "India is the best place for the long term survival of
the tiger, and I hope the government has the political will to conserve
it. Without it not much is possible." Unfortunately , post Indira Gandhi
the Save Tiger Movement has become politically isolated. Conserving the
royal beast has become a constant battle in political and legal
corridors. Nor can India fight the battle alone; if the hunger for tiger
bones and fur does not cease in foreign shores the tiger will always live
under the shadow of the gun.

The battle, however, is not lost and India's green army is struggling,
planning and working out solutions. The tiger reserve network has
expanded to 28 reserves covering 37,761 sq kms. Long, contagious habitats
such as Rajaji, Corbett, Dudhwa, Valmiki in the north and Kanha, Melghat,
Satpura, Tadoba and Pench in western India have been identified for
conservation by the WWF.

Gopal assesses that a bare minimum of 80,000 sq kms be set aside for the
tiger, "here wildlife must be insulated from humans to minimise adverse
impacts." New initiatives have been taken, the project has set up a tiger
monitoring system, a high tech query based online system constantly
updated by reserves across India. Information flow from the field to the
Delhi directorate is fast and smooth to effectively deal with local
crisis.' It helps keep track of tiger locations, movement, human-tiger
conflict, wildlife mortality and forest fires.

Sen underlines the urgency to study and arrive at a biologically viable
population that India can protect and sustain given the immense pressures
and limited resources. To contain poaching a Wildlife Crime cell,
operational not lying comatose as the existent one is essential. "It
should be along the lines of a para-military force," advises a forest
official. Tiger doyen, Billy Arjan Singh has long advocated for the
formation of a separate ministry exclusively devoted to wildlife
preservation, echoed by many modern day conservationists, but has
remained a pipe dream. Forest guards who work at the ground level need to
be better equipped to protect their wards. The wish list also calls for
strong political support for India's national animal.

Do we want the Royal Bengal tiger to join the list of three tiger
subspecies already extinct? Would we sleep in peace if we allowed the
massacre of the national heritage that the tiger undoubtedly is?

No. The king of the jungle can, and must, reign supreme in its kingdom.

Proud to be Indian

Which country has the maximum number of tigers? The unexpected answer is
the United States of America, never the natural habitat of the tiger. In
the US, the tiger is not a creature of the wild. They live or rather die
in tiny backyards, perform freak tricks in films and circuses, are given
as birthday gifts, boiled alive, shot to pieces or baited in pit fights
in tune with the owner's whims and fancies.

I have seen the animal in Tiger Zoos - alleged undercover for tiger
factories - in Thailand where the males are ground into Oriental medicine
and the females serve as breeding machines to feed a demand for live cub
trade. I have seen the tiger on TV in a shocking film congratulating man
for taming the mighty tiger. Taming the Tiger focused on pet tigers
around the globe, showing the big cat on film sets and circuses jumping
through fire and begging for their supper. Not a question was raised why
we had reducing the mighty predator to a puppet in chains.

I know of countries pressing for commercial harvesting of tigers, I have
scoured the Internet and been offered tiger skulls and cubs as gift for
macho boyfriends from sellers in the US.

And through it all, I felt proud to be Indian. India with its rag tag yet
determined green army slaving, struggling, fighting to save its wild
tigers. I do not shirk away from the immense problems we face, of the
mines, industries, dams and other development projects that eat away into
our reserves. I am not denying our failures - railway lines that cut
through Dudhwa, the tiger dragging itself with its paw entrenched in the
jaws of death in Nagarhole, forest officers at loggerheads with
scientists and NGO - all apparently working towards a common cause. India
has stood steadfast in her resolve to protect the tiger. Inspite of
insurmountable hurdles, India has saved wild tigers and all those animals
and plants that thrive under its predatory umbrella.


Always secretive, Never devious
Always a killer, never a murderer
Solitary never alone

-John Seidensticke

Is it beyond our political will and administrative ingenuity to set aside
one or two percent of forests in their pristine glory for the tiger. Its
habitat must be inviolate.

-Late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi

The Tiger is a large hearted gentleman with boundless courage and when he
is exterminated as exterminated he will be,unless public opinion rallies
to his support

-Jim Corbett, 1944
 

Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partner online.