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The
Sad Story of India’s Project Tiger
There were an estimated
1,827 tigers in India in 1972. In over 30 years the
government poured more than US$80 million into Project
Tiger, its flagship conservation programme. Now, in
2008, there are only 1,411 tigers. How could such a
disaster occur?
Project Tiger came about
because the Prime Minister of the time, Indira Gandhi,
was deeply interested in wildlife and forest conservation,
which dominated her speech to an IUCN General Assembly
in Delhi in 1969. The Assembly was horrified at the
rapid decline of India’s tigers through international
trophy hunting and mass export of skins to the western
world. WWF Trustee Guy Mountfort created Operation Tiger
to raise conservation funds. He visited Indira Gandhi
and urged her to take action to conserve India’s tigers
and promised US$1 million funding (the only foreign
funds the central government has accepted); she took
immediate action to set up a Tiger Task Force that gave
birth to Project Tiger.
Project Tiger, the world’s
biggest wildlife conservation programme at the time,
was launched by the government on 1 April 1973 at the
newly established Corbett Tiger Reserve in the Himalayan
foothills. It quickly won international praise as it
reported a population of 3,015 tigers in 1979 and 4,334
in 1989, using a census method of counting pugmarks.
The method was beginning to be criticised as unscientific
and the results were said to be exaggerated, but Project
Tiger stood by it.
There was growing evidence
in the late 80s that tigers were being poached to provide
bones for medicine in China. A Tibetan was arrested
in Delhi with nearly 300 kg of tiger bones in 1993,
and more bones were found in a dump. Tibetans were reported
selling bones on the streets of Beijing and Chongching.
The famous Ranthambhore tiger reserve lost over half
of its 44 tigers to poachers.
It was a serious crisis
and the government and Project Tiger promised action.
But police seizures of bones continued, and officials
said they could represent only a tenth of the bones
that were being smuggled out of the country. Skins were
being thrown away as bones were worth far more and easier
to smuggle. However, skins returned to the illegal market
after the year 2000 to ornament Tibetans at public ceremonies.
Although it was clear
that policing of tiger reserves was crucial and needed
to be strengthened, for financial reasons the government
banned recruiting of guards, who day by day patrol reserves.
That resulted in a lack of staff in reserves, and today
most of the remaining guards and foresters are over
50.
Under pressure from CITES,
the government agreed in 1994 to establish a Wildlife
Crime Bureau, similar to its Criminal Investigation
Bureau; but it did not come into being until 2007.
India’s federal constitution
made it difficult for Project Tiger, with minimal staff,
to manage reserves because they were mainly the responsibility
of state governments, of which many are more interested
in economic development than wildlife conservation.
The Auditor General,
in a widespread criticism of Project Tiger in 2006,
drew attention to delayed release of funds to state
governments, and diversion of funds intended for conservation
programmes. State governments have recently been warned
that the government may stop funding them if money is
not properly used.
The Indian tiger’s
future
India’s tigers are found
in 17 states, but only five have more than 100 tigers,
and all reserves are isolated so that India’s tiger
population is grossly fragmented. Many reserves have
fewer than 50 tigers, and only two have more than 100.
Meanwhile, the human population has doubled from 553
million in 1971 to 1.1 billion in 2001 and will continue
to rise, increasing the pressure on forests for land
for housing and agriculture, and for industry and mining:
much of India’s rich minerals lie under forests and
reserves.
A government Act that
gives tribal and other forest people ownership of land
where they have been living has created deep concern
among conservationists. There are nearly 68 million
tribals in India (about nine per cent of the population),
including some 3.7 million living in the 591 protected
areas, and 380,500 of those are in the 28 Project Tiger
reserves. The fear is that forests, already fragmented,
may suffer further by clearing of trees for agriculture,
roads and utilities, and that land may be sold to developers.
The government has promised to secure critical tiger
habitats covering 31,000 km2, and to translocate families
living there. The Bombay Natural History Society, the
Wildlife Trust of India, and the Orissa Wildlife Society
have filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the
Act, and there are petitions pending from other organisations
in high courts. Translocation of tribals from tiger
reserves, which has always been difficult, may lead
to lengthy court cases.
Full protection of tigers
from poachers will be difficult unless reserves are
fully staffed. Furthermore, there is concern that China
may remove the ban on domestic trade in tigers; conservationists
say that will increase poaching of wild tigers.
Can India’s tigers survive?
Yes, they can. The government has already announced
improvements in the protection of tigers; they must
be implemented rapidly and forcibly, and it should involve
India’s skilled scientists whose knowledge and abilities
have been disregarded for too long. It is not just tigers;
India’s forests, already depleted, are crucial to the
lives of millions of people and to India’s priceless
wildlife.
Peter
Jackson
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