Tiger, tiger, burning out

According to the 1993 tiger census, the national population of the majestic beast had dropped from 4,334 in 1989 to 3,750. The decline in its birthrate has not helped. There hasbeen a drop of 1,400 to 1,500 tigers in just four years 8212; a loss of one tiger per day. Though the figures of the 1997 census have not been declared by the Government of India, the director of the Tiger Cell B.K. Sen has conceded that the animal8217;s population has dropped further. There are approximately 3,000 of them today.

But why is the trade in tiger parts such a flourishing one? According to Brigadier Ranjit Talwar, coordinator of WWF8217;s Tiger Cell, almost all parts of the tiger, including its faeces, are believed to have medicinal benefits. An official in the Ministry of Environment and Forests MEF points out that the most common route for the smuggling of tiger parts is from India to Tibet through Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Nepal. The Chinese were among the first to have recognised the medicinal properties of various tiger parts. Today, apart from China, the demand for tiger parts also comes from countries like Japan, Vietnam, Laos, the two Koreas, and even the West.

The focus of worldattention shifted to the Indian sub-continent, according to the MEF official, after the tiger became extinct in other parts of the world and strict legal protection was accorded to them. In India, the task of the poacher is relatively easier because of the lack of adequate wildlife protection laws and their poor enforcement. The initial success of Project Tiger, launched in 1973, was due to the sudden attention that the world paid to this issue, with funds from various international agencies flowing in. By 1989, however, there was a resurgence in the wildlife trade. By the early 1990s, poaching had begun to touch alarming levels.

Valmik Thapar, a tiger activist, expresses grave concern at the rate in which tigers are disappearing. quot;According to available figures, we are left with no more than 2,000 tigers in the wild the remaining being in the protected national parks. So we are back to the point where we started with Project Tiger,quot; he says.Since December last, Thapar points out that 10 tiger carcasseshave been recovered from two of the country8217;s premier reserves 8212; six from Corbett and four from Dudhwa. quot;Again, just a few carcasses are actually recovered. So, we are losing tigers at the rate of 250-300 every year, whether from habitat loss, poaching or poisoning,quot; he adds.

Only the carcasses of those tigers poisoned by villagers apprehensive of losing their livestock to the beast are recovered. Those killed for illegal commercial purposes remain untraced. Thapar blames the forest department for the indifferent vigilance and shabby enforcement. Says he, quot;We do have the Wildlife Protection Act 1972, Forest Conservation Act 1980 and Environment Protection Act 1986, but in each of our national parks, every provision of these laws is violated with impunity. Everywhere you go, encroachments have taken place, whether by miners, business houses or the village mafia.quot;

Divisional Forest Officer DFO of Ramnagar, G.S. Pandey 8212; who administers a major part of the Corbett Tiger Reserve 8212; expresseshelplessness. quot;We neither have sufficient infrastructure arms, vehicles and wireless sets nor the manpower. For example the Ramnagar division includes a forest area of 49,000 hectares and to administer this we have a manpower of 150 men, including beat officers, range officers and administrative staff. How can we be expected to protect tigers from ruthless poachers armed with sophisticated weapons?quot; he asks defensively.

Even the numerous NGOs working in this area can do little. At the most, they can prevent a tiger from being poisoned once in a way by talking to villagers about the problem and compensating them for the loss of their cattle. Says Gyan Sarin of Corbett Foundation, quot;We try to spread awareness and this has helped dissuade villagers from poisoning the animal. But unless the government launches a sustained programme, backed by excellent intelligence and enforcement, poaching for commercial reasons is almost impossible to stop.quot;

The government, however, does not seem too interested. The DelhiHigh Court, on a petition of the WWF, had ordered the MEF to constitute a committee in 1993 to suggest ways of saving the tiger. Another committee 8212; the Subramaniam committee 8212; had given almost the same suggestions. The recommendations included arming forest guards properly; providing them with adequate facilities; setting up special courts to dispense speedy punishment to violators of the Wildlife Protection Act violation; setting up of special police posts near vulnerable areas and so on. To this day, these recommendations remain unimplemented.

However, the government alone cannot be expected to save the tiger. Local communities have necessarily to be involved in the effort. What activists in the field emphasise is the need to focus, not just on the tiger but on the humans living in these regions as well. Conservation, they say, has become a very elitist preoccuption and this top-down approach just doesn8217;t work. It has to be an integrated one.

Talwar of the WWF is not optimistic about the future ofthe tiger. quot;In five years, the tiger will have disappeared from everywhere but the protected reserves, which account for just 40 per cent of the forest area,quot; he says. However Anoop Badhwa, joint-director of Project Tiger, dismisses such fears as quot;ridiculousquot;. He says the MEF is devising ways to upgrade protective measures and is is planning to increase the area under tiger reserves to 60,000 square km 8212; double the present area. But Thapar believes that the battle to save the tiger is a lost one: quot;Today, even our goal is only to delay the inevitable 8212; the virtual extinction of this animal.quot;