Indian tiger finds a friend in US media

While the fate of the tiger leaves mostof the Indian population cold — involved as it is in its own survival act — the message was conveyed with chilling starkness this week in a triple dose to a more receptive American audience: The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History opened a new tiger exhibit to acclaim from wildlife aficianodos, while CNN ran a lengthy segment on Sunday in its Newsstand program it produces with Time magazine. But the piece de resistance was a Public Broadcasting Service telecast spread over three days of `India: Land of the Tiger,’ a remarkable six-hour feature commissioned by the BBC in its `Nature’ series and hosted by naturalist Valmik Thapar.

Thapar provided an appalling prognosis for the tiger that should stir not only the Indian government but also international attention. “The crisis is at a critical point,” he says grimly in the film that attracted rave reviews in the US media. “I believe if we can win some battles to save the tiger, India will have around 500 tigers in about 12 protected areasin 2010. If we fail to win some of today’s battles, tigers will be virtually extinct by the time of the next Year of the Tiger in 2010.” Best case scenario: 500. Worst case: 0.

And what are the battles? Increased space for the tiger and scope for better prey. The pressure of ever expanding human population edging into tiger habitat is putting the big cat out of commission. Tigers occupy large territories, sometimes upto 400 square miles in areas where food is scarce and often upto 100 sq miles even when food is aplenty. Bengal tigers, which can weigh more than 400 pounds, can eat 40 pounds of meat in a sitting. But dwindling space and food is pushing tigers into the open — sometimes into the rifle sights of poachers.

The conflict was brought out sharply in the CNN Newsstand story in which an illiterate villager stonily complained through a translator: “Tiger is very bad. They eat up all our cattle. It is your animal. Your animal is destroying our lives.”

Typically, the story also captured officialattitudes and bureaucratese in all its glory. “We know the remedy and we are trying to find it out,” a government official named P K Sen said. “But I told you we are a developing country. We have a lot more priority. We can’t stop anything you know.” Sen also said the government had little control over the people and it (tiger conservation) is a “very, very tough balancing act”.

Conservationists like Valmik Thapar and Belinda Wright say the Central Government is rapidly losing grip over the situation, having to deal with a dozen state governments and different political parties that rule over Indian tiger terrain that stretches from Assam and the foothills of the Himalayas in the north to central India to the reserves in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Although the Centre earmarks funds on paper, the reality on the ground is that many times guards salaries go unpaid, forest jeeps have no gas, rifles have no bullets and flashlights have no batteries. “There are only piles of paper and lip service,” saysBelinda Wright of the Wildlife Preservation Society of India.

Wright and Thapar also underscored the poor implementation of wildlife conservation laws and the sloth in judicial processes in these matters, a topic that is fresh in India right now. “Wildlife court cases take upto 20 years for a conviction,” Wright complained. “And in that time, your witnesses have disappeared, your whole case has changed.”

But the films were not all gloom. In one example that would surely resonate in India right now, Thapar related a story of a young villager who was shot dead by the poachers he was chasing. “Where else would someone give their life for a gazelle?” Thapar asks.

Both the CNN and PBS telecasts attracted a great deal of attention in the US but the Indian government has limited ideas, means and resources of channelising this interest. In fact, the six-hour BBC Nature mini series — in which the tiger story constituted just one segment — probably did more for Indian tourism than the entire advertisingbudget of the ministry. From lizards that fly to elephants that swim, from fish that walk to apes that sing, the “high-minded, stunningly gorgeous” film captured what one reviewer called the “complex ballet of life and death” in India. But of all the stories, the tragic tale of the dwindling tiger in the land of Kipling’s Jungle Book remained the most poignant.