Opinion Tigers crossing vast distances in east-central India bring a message of hope. If only we would listen

Tigers don’t ‘stray’. They wander, they migrate. And counterintuitive as this may sound, tigers migrating such mammoth distances is as much a proof of conservation success as it is of conservation failure. Conservation success, because the origins of most of these walkers lie in the tiger rich states of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, among the best performing states in tiger conservation where tiger numbers have jumped remarkably over the past 15 years. With most tiger reserves here filled to the brim with the big cats, many a tiger – sometimes young males looking to eke out a patch of forests for themselves, at other times older males pushed out by their younger counterparts – are forced to move out. Invariably, many of them head eastwards, into Chhattisgarh, Telangana. And so, begins their long march.

It is mostly the territorial males which travel afar, females tend to stick within a 100-200 km radius of their natal forests though odd exceptions do occur (such as the recent case of a tigress migrating from Pench in Madhya Pradesh to Achanakmar in Chhattisgarh). For the males though, there are two things they are looking for – ample prey, and mating opportunities. And this is where the conservation failure aspect comes in.

Regrettably, despite their vast expanses of green, all the east-central Indian forests are practically “barren” from the point of view of prey base and presence of tigresses. Except for notable exceptions such as Similipal and Amrabad (Telangana), there is not a single forest in all these states that has multiple breeding females. Tiger reserves such as Satkosia (Odisha) and Achanakmar have some semblance of prey-base, but no breeding females, the former having lost all its tigers more than a decade ago. No other tiger reserve, dozens of wildlife sanctuaries, and thousands of sq kms of forests across these states has either enough tiger preferred wild prey or mates to make even one of these males settle down. In scientific parlance, such forests, emptied of nearly all its large and medium sized mammalian fauna, are said to be afflicted by the “Empty Forest Syndrome”. The primary driving factor for this – rampant bushmeat hunting over the decades — yet another testimony of conservation failure in these states.

And so, our roving tigers keep walking – navigating roads, railway lines, villages, agricultural fields, mines, bushmeat traps, and so on. In the absence of wild prey, they almost exclusively survive on village cattle that they find en-route, thus bringing them into conflict with locals. Consequently, most never make it beyond a few months, and vanish without a trace. The forest department, in most cases, never even gets a whiff of them. A fraction of them makes it through, continuing their seemingly endless journey, sometimes for years. They usually take pit-stops in certain areas where they might stay a few weeks or months before moving on. Kawal tiger reserve and Kagaznagar forests in Telangana, Protected Areas such as Indravati, Sitanadi-Udanti, Kanger, Gomarda, Barnawapara, Guru-Ghasidas,Tamor Pingla in Chhattisgarh, Sunabeda and Debrigarh sanctuaries in Odisha are some of the most prominent pit-stops..

Of late, Palamau tiger reserve in western Jharkhand has emerged as the most important pit-stop for tigers that march out of eastern Madhya Pradesh, and survive the first few hundred kilometres through Chhattisgarh. One of the original nine tiger reserves, once a conservation bright spot, now among the worst performing reserves in India, at least half a dozen male tigers have landed up here in the past two years. With its former resident tiger population and prey base completely wiped out – Palamau being the only tiger reserve in the entire country where even the otherwise common sambar deer, the chief prey species of tigers, has been poached to extinction – these males usually take a breather for a few weeks at Palamau, persisting on cattle. Then, they march onwards, and due to absence of monitoring, vanish without a trace. Two, however, have bucked this trend. A male whose march began from Sanjay tiger reserve (Madhya Pradesh) and who was probably born in the Bandhavgarh landscape, carried forth through adjoining Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla tiger reserve. After a brief stay in Palamau, it traversed southern-Jharkhand, turned south to cross over into Odisha, and eventually reached Similipal, Zeenat’s new home. The other male, again originating from Guru Ghasidas, took the same way out of Palamau into southern Jharkhand. But once here, he turned east, into Bengal. This is the male who roams Purulia as I write this essay.

However, beyond the story of conservation success and failures, there is another aspect to this story – of hope. Despite the dismal state of wildlife in the forests of east-central India, they still are one of the largest swathes of forests in India, replete with large potential tiger habitats and interconnected corridors. In the face of unprecedented threats – from mining to linear infrastructure projects, dams to industries – looming over these forests across states, these roving tigers remind us that they can return to landscapes they had disappeared from, but only as long as their forests remain intact. Empty forests can once again be full of wildlife, but only if those forests are allowed to be. Perhaps, this is the message these wandering tigers bring along with them, year after year. If only we would listen.

The writer is a conservationist, wildlife historian and works with Wildlife Conservation Trust, Mumbai