Opinion - News Analysis   

"We need inviolate spaces for tigers"

G. Ananthakrishnan

K. Ullas Karanth, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society-India Programme, is clear that tigers and humans cannot co-exist from an ecological perspective. His observations on the Tiger Task Force report reflect a balanced understanding of conservation dynamics.

Ullas Karanth ... critical of Project Tiger.— Photo : R. Shivaji Rao

What is your assessment of the report of the Tiger Task Force?

Overall, the report has pluses and minuses. There are some very good points that are really positive, and there are some really bad points.

The Tiger Task Force report has generated a lot of controversy. What are the good points you see in it?

The approach is very transparent, and the report has been put on the web. This is very critical as it can be studied, taken apart, and commented upon. In the past such reports were never made public. There is also the suggestion that wildlife reserve management plans and annual plans will be placed in the public domain. In the absence of such transparency and critiquing, a lot mismanagement of tiger habitats is taking place, either through corruption or ignorance.

The other important good point is clearly the recognition that for maintaining a viable breeding population of wild tigers, there must be inviolate places. The report mentions some 37,000 sq. km. in tiger reserves as such potential inviolate space in all our protected areas, but actually there should be more than this. The way the report identifies potential inviolate areas is flawed, but its unanimous emphasis on absolutely inviolate critical tiger habitats is positive.

Also, this report has discredited the total count pugmark census fully and recognises clearly the scientific consensus that we should switch to sampling methods.

It also talks about raising money from end users of forest and wildlife, whether it is irrigation, or mining, dams, tourism, etc., to pay more for tiger conservation. This approach is excellent, and added to the money that would be saved in development sectors through carefully targeted village relocations out of tiger habitats, this can generate sufficient money for that process.

Where has the Task Force lost the opportunities?

There is very good data available on the tiger, on prey densities and population dynamics from Nepal and India where some of us have conducted long-term ecological studies. The Task Force has not really gone into the question of how much inviolate space is needed for the tiger for a viable population, using such good science as a basis. The panel has swallowed hook, line, and sinker the Project Tiger directorate's science-deficient approach for estimating necessary or feasible areas to be kept inviolate.

Secondly, for the past decade forest department-led eco-development projects have been a big distraction, drawing attention and energies away from protection and breeding massive corruption. The Task Force criticises this but then does not take a clear and strong position to end this pursuit of eco-development by the forest department and the consultancy lobbies that back it big time. The Task Force also does not fix responsibility for the gross failure of the Ministry of Environment and Forests. During the 1970s till 1990s the project focus was on protection, while in the 1990s, this shifted to eco-development. Since 2002, Project Tiger and the MoEF entered an ostrich phase, when the problems multiplied. They were in a constant state of denial, leading to the collapse of not just Sariska but also Panna and other places.

Everything is blamed on the Rajasthan State Government. Panna is an ongoing failure and the so-called best managed reserve of Kanha still has a huge number of villages inside it. Yet, responsibility is not fixed even on the State Government. The fact that Project Tiger fiddled while everything happened and must therefore share the blame is forgotten. If officials in Rajasthan have to be suspended, why not their counterparts at the Centre?

How do you view the role of the MoEF in conservation in recent years?

MoEF has done horrendous things during these past four years to weaken the protection to tiger habitats earlier offered by the Forest Conservation Act, by diluting project clearance procedures. Project Tiger, with all its tall talk about landscape approach and so on buries its head in the sand and does nothing. The MoEF and the Director of Project Tiger should have been kept at arm's length by the Task Force, which should have functioned with its own independent secretariat.

Who has to implement the vast agenda that is laid out by the Task Force?

This responsibility surprisingly is assigned to the same MoEF Project Tiger and Wildlife Institute of India. Both these are failing institutions with huge weaknesses. They cannot deliver what is expected. I wish the report had really emphasised more state-level action and greater NGO involvement.

We must have sufficient truly inviolate spaces for tigers to survive in the long run. It could be 50,000 or 100,000 sq km depending on what we are willing and able to fund. We need to ensure that there is enough money to make these spaces truly inviolate, which can be done. There is a great deal of money in the Rural Development Department, Highways and Power Departments that can be shifted to this task.

Whether such critical habitat is labelled a Project Tiger area is secondary. The need is for us to have a large enough inviolate area, where we cannot have any form of consumptive use or exploitation. There is sufficient money if the cost of delivering development to the local communities living in such potential inviolate areas is applied to relocate them satisfactorily.

The past allocations and performance of Project Tiger should not be the yardstick for what is possible.

Why is co-existence of people and tigers not possible?

Large carnivores come into major conflict with humans hence co-existence is not possible in these inviolate areas. Why has the tiger range reduced to five per cent of what it used to be originally? If it could coexist with humans, it would not have shrunk. So the Wildlife Protection Act should not be diluted to allow use in such areas.

However, those areas currently under nature reserves where human use is too intense and population density too high, where stray tigers can only live in perpetual conflict with people, should be legally re-categorised and put outside the targeted inviolate critical tiger habitats. The prescribed `core-buffer demarcation,' which does not apply in most excellent tiger habitats in India, should not be the tool used for reclassification.

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