ROAR OF APPROVAL

The moral of the story, Rawat stresses, is harnessing the strength and knowledge of the villager, part of a local community, which has always lived next to India8217;s oldest tiger reserve. Villagers form a living, integral part of the success story in Corbett.

That is why, when villagers here lose their livestock to tigers, there is prompt compensation. The government gives the villagers sums ranging between Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,000 for cows and buffalos that fall prey to the big cats. The NGO Jim Corbett Foundation also compensates them on a case-to-case basis.

The Ecotourism Experiment

It is important to involve the villagers in tiger conservation. While three sides of Corbett Reserve are surrounded by forests, as many as 27 villages share a border with the buffer zone 445 sq km. In a recent notification, the inviolate critical habitat of the park has been set at 825 sq km. More than 200 Gujjar families live in the buffer sone. Two years ago, the park, under Director Rajiv Bhartari, a Board member on the International Ecotourism Society, decided to involve the local villagers to strengthen ecotourism activities. About 20 per cent of the total budget of the park8217;s Rs 3 crore was put aside for ecotourism.

8220;The scale at which I was suggesting ecotourism was a new idea,8221; says Bhartari, who is credited for being solely responsible for the success of the experiment. 8220;The administration here privately predicted I would last only two months while the private resorts thought I could survive only a year,8221; he laughs.

It worked. For a start, thirty rooms in Dhikala forest rest house were renovated. In 2005, 24 local villagers were trained to work as room attendants. In 2006, 20 more were trained, injecting youth and passion in the tourist service as well as creating a vital link with eco-samitis in the villages. Seventy-two nature guides and 200 Gypsy drivers were taken in as well. An additional housekeeping charge was added to each bill, helping pay for the salaries of the new recruits as well as paying for services like laundry and naphthalene balls.

8220;We are creating empathy for the cause of the forest and its wildlife by creating employment in the park for those who live around it. When the forest becomes a livelihood, then it will be protected,8221; Bhartari says.

Every Thursday, batches of 30 people from surrounding villages are taken for a tour of the park to sensitise them to what the tiger needs to flourish.

In Choti Haldwani, once the summer retreat of Jim Corbett, a heritage trail has been created. Since 2005, villagers have systematically set up low-cost accommodation where tourists can stay, while some villagers also double up as forest guides.

Saving the tiger while straddling tourist facilities is not an easy process, and there is a terse line between keeping the tiger, a highly territorial animal, happy, and opening up a reserve for commerce.

8220;I8217;m not a big fan of ecotourism,8221; says award-winning conservationist Belinda Wright, also a member of the National Board for Wildlife. 8220;But it can work in specific instances,8221; she says.

In Corbett, it seems to have worked. 8220;An outsider setting up a resort and employing a couple of local youth is not ecotourism,8221; points out Imran A Khan, a biologist who runs a private resort, Jim8217;s Jungle Retreat, in the buffer zone of Corbett Park. Genuine ecotourism is when the benefits of tourism percolate to the local community. The success of ecotourism, however, does not worry the private resorts, he says. 8220;There is a separate niche for a luxury resort. There is space in the market for staying at a resort as well as in a village with the locals.8221;

And locals are all important. US-based biologist and conservationist George Schaller says, 8220;The Indian tiger needs to be saved by saving its contiguous habitat. Local communities are stewards of their land. Landscape conservation can only exist with community participation.8221;

To protect the tiger, the villages of Jhirna, Dhara, Kothi Rau have been shifted from the buffer zone a process on since the last decade, while a fourth village, Lal Dhang, is being relocated.

8216;The luxury8217; of 70 years8217; protection

Bhartari points out that Corbett has had the 8216;luxury8217; of 70 years8217; of protection. Established in 1936 first as Hailey Sanctuary, he says that park officials have a deep sense of their responsibility. In the buffer zone, 70 years of legacy speak. Everything is named after Corbett: Corbett International, Corbett Aroma, Corbett Den, even Corbett Hairdresser.

Yet, as the locals were slowly invo-lved in park activities, it became clear that villagers who had shared boundaries8212;and in some cases none 8212;had no idea about tiger conservation or even the Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve.

Ecotourism was a new word too. 8220;I didn8217;t know what a 8216;tourist8217; meant. I thought it was perhaps an animal in the jungle,8221; says Abdul Rahman, 24, a Gujjar who belongs to Dhela, a settlement in the Jhirna range in the buffer zone of the tiger reserve. His is one of the estimated 250 Gujjar families who live in the buffer zone. Rahman proudly says that he is the first one to leave his community8217;s traditional occupation8212;cattle rearing and milk procurement8212;and get a real job as a guide in the park. 8220;No one was really interested in the tiger in our community. We looked at him as a menace who occasionally killed our cattle. We didn8217;t know that this was a protected tiger reserve. We only knew it was a jungle,8221; he says.

8220;Now the Park has given me an occupation and the entire community wants to be relocated. We don8217;t want to live in the jungle; we want the next generation to go to school.8221; Next, he wants to learn some English and impress foreign tourists.

Harish Singh Negi, 27, rattles off the names of birds in English in way that makes you believe he8217;s been studying English all his life. He hasn8217;t. Only a Class X pass, working in the reserve as a guide gives him a sense of responsibility and authority which rubbing shoulders with other strugglers in the sweaty National Capital never could. 8220;You learn something in the forest every day. I worked in Delhi for seven years. Then I came back home. Two boys from my village got picked up for working in the Park. After two years of working as a room attendant, we were trained as guides for tourists. Now I know so much, including all the names of the birds and animals. In the jungle, I learn every day. I go to my village and help with the eco-samiti there. I encourage people to plant trees and care for wildlife. If there is a forest fire, I am confident the villagers will do their best to stop it.8221;

Involving the villagers has thus become a vital link in saving the tiger, as they themselves admit. To prevent man animal conflict, eight villagers from surrounding villages have been trained to scare away wild elephants using crackers to avert crop destruction.

Lambi Gasht The Long Patrol

The other, all-important aspect of local participation, has been involving locals as watchers8212;aides to forest guards. As per Central Rules, forest guards get paid a paltry Rs 2,750 stipend per month. Of the 122 forest guard posts in the park, there are only 80 guards. The last recruitment was in 1988, some posts were filled in 2003. It wasn8217;t enough.

Under Bhartari, locals were employed as forest watchers, and 150 men, mostly from buffer villages, were made a part of long patrolling. Long patrolling, a new system introduced after 2005, typically has a group of five men8212;one forest guard with four watchers. Conducted eight times in a month over the 11 ranges in the park, the Lambi Gasht team patrols an area of 150 km over four to five days. This is a change, and an addition, to relying solely on one forest guard covering 10 km on his daily patrol. Says Suresh Chand Pant, 53, a Range Officer who has spent 15 years serving the park, 8220;Watchers not only keep vigil but they are also in touch with locals. Any suspicious person is reported immediately, forming a network of informers.8221;

A number of practical measures have also been put up for this enhanced network. Earlier, forest guards used to drink the waters of the Ramganga river, falling prey to malaria and dysentery in the monsoon. Now, three reverse osmosis plants have been put up in the park and a chakki8212;a flour mill8212;has been brought to the mess. From the new shelves put up in the mess, cartons of Amul Gold milk and Dhara refined oil peek out.

Every patrol now gets cooked food from the mess to carry on patrols, also a new initiative. Life for the forest guards, especially those in the round-the-year anti-poaching units, is hard. In the monsoon, when many parts of the park get flooded, king cobras come out. That8217;s when the chakki starts grinding and the ready food is a blessing.

Habitat Protection

Working with the Delhi-based Centre for Environmental Management of Degraded Ecosystems CEMDE, the Corbett Tiger Reserve embarked on weeding out invasive species last year, creating a good food base for tiger prey like hog deer, spotted deer and sambar. Lantana, a flowering bush that is a weed rejected by most herbivores, was identified and destroyed and 10 sq km of of the pernicious weed have been cleared since last year.

Now, there are 10,000 deer and 1,500 wild boar in the park, a good prey population for the 164 tigers and estimated 14 cubs.

Post-Script

When the tiger walks, all the animals in the jungle call out in fear. But not a tusker. While we sight a tiger resting majestically in a thicket, no one warns us of the charging young tusker who runs at us in attack position, possibly to overturn our car.

A little further on, we sight migratory birds feasting on the fish of the Ramganga. The fish are quickly nipped up by an eagle. That8217;s the beauty and ferocity of the jungle, where no rules but respect for the animals apply. It8217;s an unspoken commandment, which every park employee knows. Ask Garibullah, the oldest elephant mahout at the park if he8217;s scared of being mauled by the tiger, and he bristles with pride. 8220;Maut to ek din aani hi hai, tiger se hi sahi Death is inevitable, let it come by a tiger,8221; says the experienced hand, who worked at Dudhwa National Park for 10 years before spending 30 years at Corbett and is ready to retire this August. 8220;The tiger is always more at threat because of poaching. No one in the jungle will harm him. Corbett is better than other parks like Dudhwa because of the lambi gasht.8221;

As he says this, another tiger

call rends the air. Perhaps the tiger is listening.