Archive for July 2007
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Mail from Roy
I got a mail from Roy Fallon - my good friend from UK. He is very keen on Indian wildlife and is a great friend of tigers. Lately he has been very concerned about the “tiger crisis” in India. I think every one interested in wild tigers should go through this mail exchange that we just had.
Dear Roy,
Nice to hear from you.
The tiger situation is indeed bad (to say the least).
It appears that the government of India (the Federal government) is waking up to it but we just hope they don’t take a few years to to do so. The Prime Minister has been giving some statements lately that the tiger situation is really bad and they have to take some urgent steps to correct it. They have “plans” to set up a nation wide cell against wildlife crime and a National Tiger Conservation Authority, something like the FBI. They are also planning to recruit retired military personnel to guard the tiger reserves. I really hope that these plans are implemented “properly” and soon. There is not much time left. In fact we are already about 6 to 7 years late.
I may not really be an authority on tigers in India but I do know much more than the average Joe and I foresee a few major problems with these plans:
1. Timing
If anything has to be done it has to be done now. The Indian government has a very strong tendency to delay implementation till it does not matter any more. Right now even a bad plan would do a lot of good if it is executed right away. Doing something right away is definitely better than doing nothing at all. I just hope that they do not keep planning and delay the implementation of the few ideas that they have. And believe me they have a very few ideas.
2. Data
It is a shame that we don’t have enough scientific data on tigers, their habitat and their problems. There is hardly any research material on tigers in India. Research on tiger was discouraged in all parts of India. Whatever little data that we do have is very basic and often faulty.
One Field Director of Ranthambhore tiger reserve had once told me that “we do not need any research on tigers. We know all there is to know about them and the problems that they face.” He then went on to tell me that “one of the biggest problems that tigers face is traffic jams from photographers.” Was this guy nuts? Yes he definitely was. The problem is that the Government has given him the authority to implement whatever weird ideas that he comes up with.
He was talking about “traffic jams by photographers” when people were shooting tigers all over Ranthambhore. A shot by a camera is forever but a shot from a gun is not. And what traffic jams was he talking about? In a Park like Ranthambhore – which probably gets one of the highest number of tourists out of all the tigers reserves in India – a maximum of 40 vehicles are permitted to go at any one time. These are divided into 5 different zone. So one zone does not have more than 8 vehicles at any given time. These vehicles have to stay on the man-made tracks in the zones. They just can not stray off the track, while the tiger can go where ever he pleases to go. When ever the tigers feels disturbed by visitor’s vehicles he just walks away from the tracks and that’s it. I have seen this repeatedly in Ranthambhore for the last 10 years.
We joke that when ever there is a wildlife related crime the Forest Department officials are the last people to know about it.
The data that is submitted from the field through the Forest Department is “faked” to make the Field officers look good. For instance “Tigers don’t get poached they migrate”, “habitat is never degraded”, “there is an annual 10% rise in tiger population in all India reserves”. The list goes on.
Conservation cannot work unless there is a good and regular supply of data, intelligence, observations etc. We just have to open up the parks to researchers from all over the world. I think that every protected area should have at least on team of researchers, that is neither responsible to the Forest Department nor funded by them.
3. Monitoring
As long as Indian tiger reserves do not have an independent monitoring team, the “faked” data will keep coming up. These teams should have total and unlimited access and they should report to a Centralized authority. Their funding should not be from the Forest Department and they should not be responsible to the Forest Department. Their finding should be published online and should be available to everyone in the world. Tigers belong to all of us on this planet. They are not the exclusive preserve of the Government of India. Even if no action is taken on the findings of such monitoring teams at least let the world know about what is really going on in the tigers reserves. Such teams should carry out an “annual audit” which should be submitted to the highest authority. Believe me nothing works like “Public Pressure”. This team should be different from the research team, like activists to scientists.
4. Role of the states
Forests and wildlife in India have a funny legal status. Technically Forest and Wildlife is a state subject. That means that it is controlled by the state government and not the Federal government. We have a Central authority (it was the Project Tiger a few months ago but it is called “National Tiger Authority” or something like that now) that gives directions to the state Forest Department but the directions are not binding on them. In fact the State Forest Department often has a mind of their own.
For instance the Project Tiger conducted a nation wide survey through the Wildlife Institute of India that came out with some horrifying results, such as, there are no more than 1300 tigers left in India, Madhya Pradesh barely has 250 or so tigers (and not 600 – 700 odd that they claim) and so on. However, most of the states (and it started with Madhya Pradesh) refuse to accept the census.
We have a weird situation here. The Prime Minister of India is going around saying that tigers are on the verge of extinction in India while the State Governments are saying that their state has no problems with tigers. There might be a problem with other states but none in their own state. If they don’t even acknowledge that they have a problem how the hell are they going to sort it out.
All the Tiger Reserves in India should be under the direct control of the Federal Government and not the State Government.
5. Role of Conservationists
We have a small group of “bleeding heart” conservationists in India who are a big stumbling block for any tiger conservation measure. They are part of the “planners” at the Central level and they come out with some of the weirdest ideas you can imagine. Most of them do not have any following at the ground level. They do not like new people to do any kind of conservation work.
I will give you an example: When tigers were decimated in Sariska tiger reserve in Rajasthan state (and they were nearly decimated in Ranthambhore, that lies in the same state) the Chief Minister of Rajasthan set up a “State Empowered Committee” of Rajasthan Government to look into the problems that tigers in Rajasthan face and to suggest solutions for the same. The Chairman of this committee was a Member of Parliament from Rajasthan and there were a few “well known conservationists” in the committee. When the committee was formed we thought that the Chairman will push the issue under the carpet but the “conservationist” members will kick some ass. What finally happened was exactly the opposite. The “so called conservationists” diluted the issue while the “only man” in the entire committee turned out to the the Chairman.
It is high time the Government “expanded” its group of non-governmental tiger experts to include people from the field in India and experts from all over the world. The two best “tiger guys” in the world are based in USA and our government has nothing to do with them. Can you imagine that?
6. Role of tourism
Indian conservationists and the government does not accept the fact that “tourism is the most powerful conservation tool that they have.” It is a well known fact that in protected areas that are surrounded by high human population density (and most Tiger reserves in India are) tourism is probably the only savior for wildlife. The Forest Department and the conservationists in India believe that tourism is a big “disturbance”. Well managed tourism is the biggest conservation tool in the world.
I will give you an example. The worst managed tiger tour reserve in India is Bandhavgarh in Madhya Pradesh. The tourism area is about a 100 square kilometers (much smaller than Ranthambhore) and on an average there are 50 to 75 vehicles in that area. This area also has the highest tiger density any where in the world – almost 5 to 10 times higher than other places. There are about 30 adult tigers and almost 15 to 20 cubs right now in an area of 100 square kilometers. The numbers are growing every year, while tigers all over Madhya Pradesh are getting decimated.
Wildlife tourism has to be used as a conservation tool in India. We have no choice on this front.
For a long term tiger crisis solution in India we have to address the above issues. I just hope the Prime Minister is listening.
Cheers,
Aditya Singh
PS: I am putting your mail and my reply on my weblog. Check out www.ranthambhore.blogspot.com soon
–
The Ranthambhore Bagh
Ranthambhore Road
Sawai Madhopur 322001
India
—— Forwarded Message
From: ROY FALLON
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:45:24 +0100 (BST)
To: Aditya Singh
Subject: Contact
Hi Aditya
Just contacting you to see how things are going. Lots of good discussion on the Wildlife India forum the last few days. I have replied to a few of them myself.
Looking at the tiger situation from the outside, as I am, it seems difficult to understand why the authorities in India cannot get to grips with the situation. They seem to know exactly who and where the poachers are at almost any one time, yet nothing gets done that is of any significance.
The government seems to leave the problem to the local authorities to sort it out, but I cannot imagine anything getting done in that way. The locals are too dissorganised and too easy to corrupt. The poachers dont stay in one area, they cross borders and seem to just laugh in the face of the law.
I think it requires a national force to be set up, like the U.S.A.’s National Guard and their F.B.I. to harrass and chase these poachers until they can hardly draw breath.
They seem to be left to do exactly as they please and even if they are caught they are released and the penalties are paltry.
When India, loses its tigers, and I am convinced it will, it will be an unimaginable disaster for the whole country. Worse than any earthquake.
The Madhya Pradesh tourist authority has stated that more than 80% of India’s tourism is nature driven and that 75% of it is tiger tourism. They have said that the imbalance of tiger tourism is actually causing problems because certain areas are getting worn out due to the demand to see tigers, whilst others are getting less tourism than desired. Well let the tigers spread themselves out and that will be solved. Open up the corridors between the forests and the tigers will work out where they need to be.
The thing is, most of India’s tourism budget is generated by tiger watchers. That is a massive amount of money coming into the country. When the tiger has gone, people will start going elsewhere. If you take the whole population of India, I am sure that the poachers would hardly show up as a number on a graph, but these greedy and ruthless few are depriving the whole nation of its pride and heritage.
Not just the nation of India but the whole World.
African governments saw this coming a long time ago and did something about it. They made poachers public enemy number one, with the exception of that lunatic in Zimbabwe and the puppets in Uganda and the Gambia.
A lot of people will still go to India to see the Taj Mahal and the Golden Temple at Amritsar etc. but they will just do a round trip of all these and similar places and that will be the end of their interest in the country. The Taj Mahal, I am sure, is a wonderful and beautiful building, but at the end of the day, thats all it is… a building… made by men. The tiger is a gift from the Gods, whichever God(s) exist. Once people have travelled to see the amazing monuments, forts and palaces of India they have seen them and there is nothing more to see about them. But when they see a tiger, walking in the forest, it is an emotional experience that they will want to repeat over and over again.
I sincerely believe that to save the tiger from extinction is to save and preserve all the creatures and the forest environment.
The balance has to exist, the tiger feeds on the herbivores and the herbivores feed on the forest, if the tiger dissappears the lesser carnivores multiply and get out of control, they then ravage the forest of its prey stock, then they enter the villages and farms and take the domestic livestock.
This has been proven in Australia, of all places, where a whole colony of dingoes were exterminated as pests. The dingoes were the apex predators in the area and when they were gone the lesser predators bred like wildfire and decimated the other wildlife of the area, and of course, they then turned to domestic stock….man’s management or man’s interference?
Even the smallest and most insignificant ecosystems that you can think of fall apart in the same way.
A local farmer here in my town, built himself a huge house on, green belt land (land not to be built on). He built a load of stables and a dog boarding kennels. Here in England, those bloody peacocks are seen as a bit of a status symbol. If you are someone who think that you special, you have a load of land round your house and you get yourself a few peacocks to make it look pretty and picturesque. So this farmer got himself 6 peacocks and, as all lazy farmers do, he let them run around his grounds without any protection. So they laid eggs, when the eggs hatched there were baby peacocks running around the grounds.
Guess what???
It may astonish and surprise you, because it did astonish and surprise the farmer, when the local foxes killed all the peacock chicks. So what did this guy, who had introduced an unnatural prey species into the foxes territory, do? He shot all the foxes, of course. He dragged the fox cubs out of their dens and he battered them all to death with a shovel. He proudly acclaimed this feat of bravery to anyone who would listen.He stayed away from me of course, and he still does.
Now, as strange as it may seem, he is complaining about the local wildlife again. Obviously not because his peacock chicks are being eaten, cos there are no predators left to do that. But now he is over run with rabbits, rats and hedgehogs. The rats and hedgehogs are eating all his peacock and chicken eggs and the rabbits are eating all his horse, dog and peacock foods, the rats are at that stuff as well. So now, he is setting traps for the rest of the wildlfe on “his” land. Of course he calls the rabbits, rats and hedgehogs pests and blames them for his dilemma but any child of 8 could tell him that he is the real pest.
Anyway mate I gotta go now, time to get some dinner, my stomach thinks that my throat has been cut.
Talk soon
Roy Fallon
Migration
Recently a judge in the Rajasthan High Court passed a ruling that Ranthambhore should be closed for 2 days in a week so that the animals can get “rest” from tourists.
The Park is shut for tourists during the monsoons from July to end September. The people living around the park have a free run during this time. They go in for grazing their cattle, stocking up firewood for the winters, collecting forest produce like antlers etc, poaching etc etc. There is zero patrolling and I really mean zero. We joke that the rarest sight in Indian parks is a “Forest Guard patrolling his beat”. But believe me this is not a joke.
On a conservative estimate the amount of people who go into Ranthambhore on monsoons (when the park is shut for tourists) is ten times more than the amount of tourists who visit the park throughout the year. However, the authority just chooses to ignore people who go to the park in the monsoons and since there is no official record of such offenders, they officially do not exist.
Every year a few tigers disappear in the monsoon months and are never seen again. The official version (when there is one) is that the tigers have migrated. Migrated to where? This story is probably true for all parks in India, with the exception of Kaziranga - where they shoot first and ask later.
When I moved to Ranthambhore, about 10 years ago, there were over 30 tigers. How am I so sure? Well there was a family in the lake area - a tigress with 3 full grown cubs. There were four other families with three to four cubs each in Kachida, Chiroli, Lahpur and Thumka. There were 4 big males and a few sub adult males and at least 5 tigresses without cubs.
Since then I have seen over 60 cubs grow up to maturity and separate from their mother and then disappear to be never seen again. They just disappear , sorry “migrate” and are never seen again. A noted poacher had told me once that sub adult tigers are the best ones to “milk” - they are nearly full grown (perfect skin size) and no one notices their disappearance. Believe me, when I say that professional poachers actually “milk” tigers for their skin and bones. They never wipe out the entire lot. They really messed up in Sariska - where they ate the chicken instead of the eggs every day.