(INDIA) saving tigers

[Guest guest]

Tuesday February 21, 2006 - The Star

Saving India's tigers

 

By GAVIN RABINOWITZ

 

Crouching in a dry streambed, the tracker traces the faint footprint

of a tiger in the ochre soil with his finger.

 

" This is from two nights ago. She came up from the water hole and went

on that way, " Ramcharithar Uraon says, pointing into a dense forest of

bamboo thickets and tapered sal trees in this park in eastern India.

 

The paw print, or pug mark, is the latest sign that park rangers have

had of Rani, " the tigress of Betla, " named for the village in the

Palamau reserve around which she ranges.

 

Trackers patrol 24 hours a day looking for signs of the big cats: a

glimpse, paw tracks, droppings, remains of a kill. The clues are

elusive – not just because of the stealth with which tigers creep

through the mottled forest, but because India's tigers are vanishing.

 

 

Tiger numbers in Palamau are slowly growing and rangers say there are

at least 38 tigers now. As many as 100,000 tigers are thought to have

roamed India 100 years ago. Based on a 2001 census, officials estimate

there are just 3,500 tigers left, but conservation activists believe

there are far fewer.

 

The villains are gangs of poachers that kill cats for their pelts and

bones, which are used mostly in traditional Chinese medicine. A single

tiger carcass can fetch up to US$50,000 (RM190,000).

 

The discovery last year that poachers had wiped out every tiger in

Sariska, one of India's premier tiger reserves, caused an outcry and

demands for a beefing up of security in the parks.

 

But the threats to the tiger are as varied and complex as the lands

they roam: disappearing natural habitat shared with millions of

people, a tiger tourism industry that has alienated villagers, a

communist rebellion in a core swath of tiger lands and a conservation

effort mired in bureaucracy.

 

" Sending in the commandos sounds very hip, but it isn't the whole

solution, " says Sunita Narain, an environmentalist asked to head the

Tiger Task Force after the revelations about the Sariska fiasco.

 

She notes that Sariska already has more armed guards per square

kilometer than any other reserve in India. She says conservationists

need to take into account the realities of India, a largely

impoverished country of more than 1 billion people _ some 800 million

of whom must live on less than 90 rupees (RM7.60) a day.

 

In Ranthambhore, one of India's best known tiger reserves, high-end

hotels made some US$5mil (RM19mil) last year, Narain says. Almost none

of that went to local people, feeding animosity that has allowed

poachers to operate freely and kill dozens of tigers there in recent

years, she says.

 

" We have to get away from tiger conservation for the rich, by the

rich, " Narain says. " There has to be benefit sharing. "

 

Many tiger sanctuaries have people – often India's poorest – living

inside them. Palamau is a stark illustration. It is home to nearly 200

villages inhabited by 100,000 Adivasis, indigenous tribesmen at the

bottom of the complex Indian social ladder.

 

While India's cities are burgeoning into global technology hubs, these

communities bear only faint traces of modernity. In Betla, goats and

donkeys wander in and out of low, windowless mud huts with drooping

shingled roofs.

 

Huts have no electricity or running water, and the only contact with

the outside world comes from three public telephones in the dusty

village centre. Villagers eke out an existence through subsistence

farming _ supplemented by what they gather from the forest.

 

 

India's tigers are vanishing. Officials estimate there are just 3,500

tigers left, but conservation activists believe there are far fewer.

Some 30 tonnes of firewood and 60 tonnes of animal fodder are

collected each day in the reserve, says P.K. Gupta, a senior forest

officer at Palamau. Chunks of forest have been levelled for grazing,

and mines encroach – sometimes legally, sometimes not – onto the

sanctuary's mineral-rich land.

 

" The human pressure on the park is very high, " Gupta says.

 

Human conflict also takes a toll. Decades of poverty have fuelled

resentment and made the area a hotbed for communist rebels whose

quarter-century insurgency has killed more than 7,000 people across

India.

 

From 1990 to 2004, nine of Palamau's park workers were killed by

militants, who considered all government representatives targets. Many

rangers fled, leaving the tigers with no guardians. The park's tiger

population plunged from an estimated 62 in 1984 to 35.

 

There have not been any fatal attacks on wardens in two years, but the

reserve still has only half its allotted 130 ranger jobs filled,

although that is partly due to bureaucratic obstacles to hiring new

people.

 

Yet Palamau provides a glimmer of hope. The decline in tiger numbers

halted and signs of five cubs were spotted the past two years,

indicators that stress on the animals has eased. Using digitised

images of pug marks to identify cats, rangers estimate there are at

least 38 tigers now.

 

The success has a lot to do with Narain's theory that threats to

tigers will be reduced if local people are shown they can benefit from

conservation. At Palamau, park workers began projects to improve

villagers' lives and reduce their dependence on the forest.

Solar-powered lamps and energy-efficient pressure cookers were handed

out, to reduce the need for firewood.

 

Compensation was increased for land, houses and livestock destroyed by

wild animals, to lessen pressures to kill animals to protect property.

A fund also was established to provide villagers with small loans to

open shops or businesses and workshops were set up to teach skills

like handicraft manufacturing, beekeeping and fish farming.

 

With an improvement in relations with the villages, park officials

have been able to take a tougher stance on those who violate

conservation rules. Since 2003, officials have imprisoned 37 people

for felling trees, illicit grazing and poaching deer.

 

For Uraon, the Adavasi tracker, the programme means a job in the

forests where he was raised. His community is doing better now, he

says.

 

But others resent the forest officials. " They are forcing development

on us, " says Shashibhusan Pathak, an Adivasi activist who argues that

local people could better conserve forest and wildlife without

government interference.

 

Despite evidence of increased tiger numbers in the remote park, the

closest thing is an old stuffed head of a tiger killed 20 years ago by

irate villagers and mounted on the wall of the information center.

 

But that will be gone soon, Gupta says. " It doesn't give the right

conservation message. " – AP