ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Tiger Threatened, But not on Way Out

By Neena Bhandari Reprint | | Print |

Neena Bhandari

NEW DELHI, Sep 27 1996 (IPS) - India’s forests and wildlife reserves may no longer be a safe home for the tiger, but more than half the world’s surviving big cats are found here.

Three of the world’s eight tiger species have become extinct and India’s officially estimated tiger population of between 2,750 and 3,750, is the single largest anywhere.

This may be why, even wildlife experts here who think that little is being done to save the tiger, do not agree with the claim by a Britain-based conservation group that the tiger is on the verge of extinction in India.

In its report ‘The Big Cat Cover Up’, the Tiger Trust says that 500 tigers were killed by poachers last year, mainly to feed the Far Eastern indigenous pharmaceutical industry.

The species could vanish in the next five years, it warns and blames the ineffective anti-poaching programme for reducing India’s tiger population to below 2,500. It gives a breakdown of every recorded tiger-poaching incident in India since 1987.

The Tiger Trust has singled out the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) which it accuses of not using properly large sums of money collected for saving the Indian tiger.

However, the Secretary General of WWF-India, Samar Singh says the report is “steeped in inaccuracies”.

“The Big Cat Cover Up report of the Tiger Trust in misguided, contains factual inaccuracies and even incorrect and false statements in parts. It advocates an approach which is impractical in Indian conditions,” says a WWF-India statement.

“The figure of 95 tigers killed in 1995 and later extrapolated to 500 tigers in the same year in the report is grossly exaggerated. Most of the data provided at the end of the report is not sourced and therefore of doubtful value. There is also no indication that the contents of the report are based on actual field work,” the statement adds.

Denying the allegation that it ignored appeals to support anti- poaching operations in the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve in India’s western Rajasthan state, WWF-India replies that its wildlife trade policing agency made a big haul from poachers near the reserve last year.

The Tiger Trust advises radio collars for all big cats in the tiger reserves and more armed forest guards.

“This is not only impractical, but also fails to recognise the vital links that local communities in India have with conservation. … the Indian tiger, in the long-term, can only survive with the support of all concerned, specially the local communities,” argues WWF-India.

Officials at WWF-India say that the most effective way to stop tiger poaching is to tackle the reasons which encourage it — the demand for tiger parts by the Far Eastern medicine industry.

Conservationists here not associated with the WWF refused to comment on the Tiger Trust report. But most think it is not correct to say that the tiger is nearing extinction in India.

However, they admit that a lot still needs to be done for tiger conservation. Most of the excellent suggestions made by an expert panel two years ago to save the tiger, have still not been implemented, they point out.

“It is not effective strategies that we lack, but the political will to save the tiger. It is the responsibility of the government to physically protect the tiger. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can at best stimulate and lobby for an improvement in the system under which tigers are protected,” says a top official of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, requesting anonymity.

The tiger was nearly hunted to extinction during colonial British rule and big game hunting was not banned till 1970.

Serious efforts to save the tiger began with the much-acclaimed Project Tiger programme two decades ago which now covers the 23 tiger reserves in the country. More than half the tigers are outside the sanctuaries in the forests.

The only safeguard against poachers are still forest guards, but most of the 20,000 wildlife security personnel are poorly equipped, lacking even uniforms and shoes.

“There should be a back-up of mobile anti-poaching squads to come to their rescue when they take risks in saving a tiger from a poacher,” says well known tiger expert Valmik Thapar.

Conservationists in India agree that the tiger cannot be saved

by guns and guards alone, but also needs the support of the local people. Yet village communities living on the fringe of forests are not involved in conservation efforts.

“Tiger conservation has been rarely supported by the local communities living in and around the tiger areas. With the declaration of protected areas, most of them have had to face restrictions on access and use of resources such as fuelwood, fodder,” notes the Tiger Conservation Strategy of WWF-India.

With village communities living near the tiger parks often being evicted from their homes, it is not surprising that they see the conservation programmes as pampering the beasts at the cost of humans.