STALWART TIGER CONSERVATIONIST SPEAKS OUT IN FAVOUR OF HYBRIDISATION

[Guest guest]

*http://www.hindu.com/br/2005/10/25/stories/2005102501161800.htm*

*The man who runs Tiger Haven *

 

G. Ananthakrishnan

Tuesday, Oct 25, 2005

 

Engaging life story of a romantic advocate of preserved natural spaces and

their endangered creatures

 

 

*HONORARY TIGER — The Life of Billy Arjan Singh: Duff Hart-Davis; Roli

Books Pvt. Ltd., M 75, G.K.II Market, New Delhi-110048. Rs. 350.*

 

India's spectacular nature and charismatic mega fauna have inspired

conservationists who became legends in their lifetime. Billy Arjan Singh is

one such romantic advocate of preserved natural spaces and their endangered

creatures.

 

A colourful hunter-turned-conservationist who built up his muscles and

acquired a deserved reputation for living rough, Billy's life straddles a

long period during which the national political leadership progressively

lost interest in the uniqueness of the land. For decades, he has been a

well-known champion of the tiger. He was enthralled in his formative years

by Jim Corbett, a senior fellow convert, and equally by the young researcher

George Schaller who found his commitment to nature admirable.

 

Conservationist

 

A life as uncomplicated and exciting as Billy's deserves to be told as a

straightforward and engaging story, a task that British author Duff

Hart-Davis handles quite well in this book. The portrait of the man who is

master of Tiger Haven (his abode on the forest fringe of Dudhwa National

Park) is that of a somewhat hesitant, deeply introspective but infinitely

energetic naturalist who threw his gun away and concluded that blood sport

interested people such as himself because they suffered from a sense of

insufficiency.

 

Hart-Davis notes that according to Billy, " A sickly childhood and a natural

lack of talent had made him try to prove himself in society by the

indiscriminate slaughter of wildlife. " He ended it decisively, though, and

turned to conservation with the true zeal of a convert. As he advanced in

years, he despaired that the tiger would ever be able to survive the

onslaught of population pressure on the few remaining natural spaces.

 

Tiger Haven

 

The author paints an evocative picture of the hauntingly beautiful vistas

that first drew Billy to the site of Tiger Haven outside the Dudhwa Reserve

Forest. It was, by Hart-Davis' account, a delightful place skirted by rivers

and throbbing with life: flights of screeching green parrots, emerald

kingfishers, orioles, drongos, mynahs, bulbuls and, upon nightfall, the

electrifying presence of carnivores. Tiger Haven is the centre of Billy

Arjan Singh's universe. It has been the setting of some of the most

ambitious conservation plans that he pursued. There was intense drama, for

instance, surrounding the fortunes of Eelie a stray dog that came to stay

and Prince, an orphaned leopard cub that was brought by another devoted

conservationist, Belinda Wright and her family.

 

The unusual companionship between a leopard and a dog is not lost on the

reader and an absorbing tale follows in which the carnivore is returned to

the forest, where it finds a mate in Harriet, also reared by Billy. There

are heart-warming moments in Billy's struggle when he received personal

commendation, support and active help from no less than the prime minister.

 

It was the 1970s, the period of Indira Gandhi's stewardship of the country

that was, minus its political turbulence, a time of unmatched dedication to

protecting forests. Among her first supportive actions was the declaration

of the forests in and around Dudhwa a National Park, bringing him tremendous

satisfaction.

 

Captive rearing

 

Arguably the most difficult time for Billy came when he followed up his

captive rearing of leopard cubs by inducting a tiger cub and later releasing

it into the wild.

 

The bringing up of Tara and her subsequent release into the Dudhwa forest is

an experiment that has been debated at the global level by the conservation

community, because the tigress was not of pure Bengal blood and possessed

some Siberian genes.

 

Hart-Davis is sympathetic to this experiment, which Billy has defended

strongly, partly invoking the detractors' earlier arguments that tigers and

their habitat are in such decline in India that they are likely to perish

from inbreeding in any case. Clearly, his heart ruled his head and he

persisted with his support to Tara and the many offspring she produced,

contending that ultimately all tigers were derived from the Siberian stock.

What was more, humans never opposed the hybridisation of their own species,

so why deny the chance of survival to tigers?

 

Billy's isolation in the face of mounting conflicts between man and tiger in

the vicinity of Dudhwa and his determined defence of innocent tigers — Tara

included — from the fatal tag of man-eater is movingly told by the author.

 

The wooden and often dishonest forest bureaucracy, already under fire for

messing up Project Tiger, further loses credibility going by the many

anecdotes recounted in the book. Finally, Billy's guts inspire tigerwallahs

today and will continue to do so for a long time, even if his unconventional

approach to science will continue to have its detractors. That is what makes

*Honorary Tiger *an interesting book.

 

It is the life story of an unusual human being who views the conventional

life as meretricious and withdrew quite early into a real and beautiful

world.

 

**

 

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