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Beyond
the Tiger Task Force
Vivid photographs of Tibetans wearing tiger and
leopard skins smuggled from India (p.12) have highlighted the crisis which
India is facing because of failures in its tiger conservation programme. Early
in 2005 it was discovered that all the tigers in the Sariska Tiger Reserve,
only 200 km from the capital, Delhi, had been poached in a matter of months,
and that tigers were missing from other reserves, including the world-famous
Ranthambhore Reserve. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh established a Tiger Task
Force (TTF), which has published a report (p.4 et seq.) that, for the first
time, discloses the weakness in implementation of what should have been a model
programme. Recommendations for reform now lie on the Prime Minister’s desk,
calling for major changes in organisation, management, administration and
methodology,
The Prime Minister and his colleagues face a great
challenge in tackling the tiger crisis, but that is just part of a need to
protect India’s whole wildlife heritage, which provides so many important
benefits. India has some 600 protected areas, and tigers live not only in the
28 designated Project Tiger reserves. All the protected areas, in forests,
grasslands, arid lands, wetlands and coastal areas, contain a vast spectrum of
fauna and flora, a web of life that is threatened, like the tiger, with habitat
fragmentation, poaching, industrial development, and other pressures from a
human population numbering over a billion and still growing. Many of the TTF recommendations
need to be applied, or adapted, to all these regions and species.
A major issue in the TTF report concerns
the right of some 325,000 tribal people to live in the 28 tiger reserves. About
3,000 were moved from core areas of reserves in the past 30 years. The Tiger
Task Force recognises that more may have to be moved to relieve pressure on
tigers in breeding areas. But those who dwell in the reserves are just a small
percentage of 68 million tribals who inhabit forests and wild lands throughout
India. Most tribal people live primitive lives, lacking modern facilities, including
education and health care, and there has long been concern about their
condition, and recognition that the nation has an obligation to improve their
lives.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government came to
power in 2004 pledged to tackle the situation, and earlier this year, while the
TTF was at work, a draft Tribal Forest Rights Bill was presented to Parliament
for discussion. It proposes that nuclear families living in the forests since
before 1980 should each have legal ownership of up to 2.5 ha of land. The bill
has aroused bitter arguments between those supporting the bill and
conservationists, who fear that it could lead to extensive fragmentation of the
remaining forests and thereby contribute to extinction of the tiger. In fact,
it would affect all forest fauna and flora, including many threatened species.
The bill is currently under suspension, but in the
near future it will have to be debated, revised and passed into law. There
would then be a lengthy period to establish the legitimate land rights of each
tribal family. It is hard to see how recommendations for relocation of tribals
from tiger reserves by the TTF could be implemented until the bill becomes law,
hopefully to the benefit of tribals, tigers and the rest of India’s wildlife
heritage.
Peter
Jackson
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