Aditya ‘Dicky’ Singh

……….About a year ago the Rajasthan Forest Department declared that they would relocate tigers from Ranthambhore to Sariska to right the wrong. When they fist came out with this plan almost everyone (including me) laughed at it. Most people (not me this time) had declared Sariska as history. A few months after it came out in the news that there were no tigers in Sariska – four of us – Dr. Dharmendra Khandal (Field Biologist of Tiger Watch), Dr. Amit Kotia (a fine botanist), Juhi Chaudhry (the then co-coordinator Kids for Tigers) and I – had gone to Sariska for a few days. At that time the Project Tiger and the Government of Rajasthan were still denying that tiger had been wiped out from Sariska. We had some great wildlife moments there. The habitat was amazing but the tigers were missing. Just a few weeks after we came back they government finally conceded that there were no tiger left in Sariska.

This was a big blow to the Rajasthan Forest Department and the Project Tiger, in fact, to the entire conservation movement in India. But nothing much changed. The budgets, priorities, procedures and staff stayed the same. But a handful of officers of the Rajasthan Forest Department and the Rajasthan police worked their heart out. The protection level went up dramatically. A number of poachers were apprehended and suddenly the poaching community (mainly members of the Mogiya and Bawaria hunting gathering tribes) was on the run. A convicted tiger poacher from Ranthambhore – Devi Singh Mogiya – told us this, on camera.

Dara male - the first tiger to be shifted from Ranthambore to sariska

The Mogiyas and Bawarias are off shoots of the larger Pardhi tribe. The general public opinion is that these people are extremely dangerous, very secretive and totally ruthless. They maybe ruthless for wildlife but they are really scared of any kind authority. They may be secretive but at the local level I was common knowledge that they were poaching big time. It is just that no one really bothered about them, till Sariska happened.

Dara male - the first tiger to be shifted from Ranthambore to sariska

Once the protection level increased tiger numbers in Ranthambore gradually recovered. In May 2005 the Rajasthan State Empowered Committee had declared that there were 26 tigers in Ranthambhore, which was untrue. At that time there were only 18 tigers – 13 adults and 5 cubs. Till a month or so ago there were 23 adults (one of the earlier 18 – Yuvraj - a young male was killed by Mogiyas somewhere in the end of November and six newer cubs had grown up), 6 sub adults and 8 young cubs. I could be wrong here by one or two but that would be about it.

There were recent media reports that the forest authorities had sighted 14 cubs (below the age of 4 months) during the hot summer months of 2008. This was hogwash. There are right now 8 cubs (in four different families) and not 14. And out of these 8 only 4 had been positively till the end of May. I don’t know how this figure of 14 came up. Anyways these figures are not really important. What is more relevant is that the population is on the recovery mode. Ranthambhore is not overflowing with tigers (as it is made out to be) but it is definitely on a rapid recovery mode.

By the beginning of this year the relocation plan became very serious. A lot of our “cocktail party” conservationists were dead against the plan. A few (that included me) were skeptical about it (in fact till a month ago I use to think that the Forest Department may not finally have the nerve to pull it off) but were not against it in principle. This was the only idea if Sariska had to be revived as a tiger reserve. The habitat and prey was there in Sariska but the tiger was missing. The experiment had to be tried out, even if it failed.

I have not been to Sariska in the last 6 months but the news that I was getting was that a few, actually five, enclosures – where the tigers would be released as soon as they reach Sariska. Once the tigers get over their “trauma” of the journey, they would be released.

Bachhi - the first tigress to be shfted to Sariska from ranthambore

By the second week of May most parts of the park were closed for tourists. The only part that was left open was the area of the lakes and the part from the lakes to a forest guard post called Guda (towards the southern end of the Ranthambore national park). The tourists were not complaining because this is one of the most popular part of the national park. Monitoring of tigers in the closed part of the park was intensified and some tigers were short listed for relocation. By the middle of June a few of the shortlisted tigers were radio collared, besides the three that had been radio collared some months ago.

Bachhi - the first tigress to be shfted to Sariska from ranthambore

The tigers that were shortlisted were young tigers that had separated from their mothers about a year or so ago. A tiger of that age group would have just about established (particularly females) their territories in Ranthambhore but would not have been totally entrenched there. To move even one tiger, four or five would have to be identified so that they would be able to surely find one of them to tranquilize a few hours before they were to be air lifted.

The plan was to make a stopgap helipad inside the Ranthambore national park, where an Indian air force helicopter could land. Experts from the Wildlife Institute of India would tranquilize one of the identified tigers, put them in a covered cage, load this cage on the helicopter and fly them to Sariska, where they would be released inside the enclosures. Sounds easy but it is very difficult to pull off.
In late 2007, three tigers were radio collared in Ranthambore for monitoring purpose. When this was done, we suddenly realized that the Forest Department was serious about shifting tigers to Sariska. One of these three tigers – a male that is slightly over 3 years old and is known as the Darra male or T 10 – was the first tiger that was the first tiger to be relocated to Sariska. The helicopter arrived in Ranthambhore on the evening of the 28th of June. The idea was to relocate the first (of the five – 2 males and 3 females) tiger on the morning of the 29th. It almost did not work out because it was raining heavily on the 29th morning. The tiger (Darra male) was located and the entire forest team was waiting for the rains to stop. Slightly after 1000 hours or so the rain stopped, the tiger was tranquilized, put in the cage and airlifted. It was real touch and go. The tiger recovered from the tranquilizing dose in midair but was still too dazed to move around. They managed to land him in Sariska and move the cage to one of the enclosures. The top brass of Rajasthan Forest Department was in the helicopter with the tiger.

A forest officer told me that the moment they opened the gate of the cage, the tiger almost charged out of it and hid behind some bushes in the enclosure. They had left a bait for him in the enclosure, which he killed a few hours after being released but did not eat till much later.

On the 6th of July a tigress, known here as Bachhi (or daughter – because she is the daughter of a Ranthambhore most famous tigress – Machali – from the last litter) was similarly moved. This time the entire operation went like clockwork. Bachhi was my favorite, an absolute beauty, and I have some amazing pictures of her. What was interesting is that these two were territorial neighbors and had mated about a month ago. Both of them are still very young so the mating may not be fruitful but they would be surely recognizing each other’s scent. A day after Bachhi reached Sariska, the Darra male was released from his enclosure. He is now free to establish his domain. The forest department has been cleared the first big hurdle but there is still a big hill to climb. I am sure they will climb it.
In the map pasted below Bachhi’s territory is marked in red, while the Darra male’s territory is marked out in black. Hope they do well.

Map of Ranthambore

Hats off to officers like R N Mehrotra (Chief Wildlife Warden, Rajasthan), R S Shekhawat (Deputy Field Director, Ranthambhore national park), R S Somashekhar (DFO Sariska) and their supporting staff. You pulled out the first two rabbits out of the hat. Congrats.

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About an hour ago I checked my mail and got a shock. There was this comment on my last post (Shooting with Andy Rouse) from Anubhav, who I presume is a person of Indian origin living in the USA. It goes something like this (for those who are too lazy to read the entire comment).

Hello Aditya,
Nice to know about your nature photography 101. Reading your blog for the past 1 year. I have come to expect a lot of the serious stuff plaguing the park like what were your observations on Sariska translocation? How is the dam doing? Did you find takers for cash pooling? Are the poaching tribes still on the fringes?
May I politely suggest that please keep your post like you kept them earlier i.e. mainstream pressing issues get the lime light……..Keep justifying your name– THE SUN– and give life to Ranthambhore.

I began replying to him ………………………………

Dear Anubhav,
I though there was just an overkill of “serious” tiger news in the media and on the net for the last few months. :)…………..Almost everyone in India has overnight become an expert…… and is working to save the tigers. Just got bored of serious stuff and taking a break from it. That is one of the reasons I have not been posting much for the last 4 months or so.

There were two thoughts going through my head. One, I did not know that people actually “read” my blog. And two, I did not know that people take me seriously (my wife does not). And then I decided to blog it. Seriously.

Tigress with young cubs in ranthambore

Sariska Tiger Reserve was one of the original “nine” wildlife sanctuaries that were taken up under the Project Tiger in 1973. It was an excellent tiger habitat (still is) but due to poor protection the number of tigers there started dwindling in the middle 1990s. Somewhere in the later half of 2004, tiger disappeared from Sariska, shot dead by commercial poachers. Most of us (including the Project Tiger directorate in Delhi) came to know about it, when a friend of mine – Jay Mazumdar – wrote about it in a national daily newspaper called the Indian Express. I have an earlier post about it.

Soon after that there was a big media outcry about tigers. For almost a year before “Sariska Zero” became news there were reports of tiger crisis coming from almost all over India and Corbett tiger reserve was probably the only Project Tiger Reserve that stayed crisis free. Suddenly everyone became with access to media became tiger experts and lot of wildlife conservationists woke up from their sleep. And all this happened over night. There was no crisis till the day before Indian Express exposed Sariska zero. What followed became wildlife history in India. We heard stuff like “Rajasthan does not deserve tigers”, “hang the managers of these reserves” etc. But nothing changed at the ground level (I mean at the various Project Tiger Reserve level).

Tigress shifted to Sariska

Of course no such hanging took place. A few Forest guards in Sariska were suspended, a few committees and Task Forces were formed and they published their reports. The Government of India and Rajasthan ended up with egg on their face and Project Tiger got really bad press publicity. A lot of “tiger lovers” and “wildlife conservationists” – both professional and amateur – got all excited and tried to get their “15 seconds of fame” and some got much more than that. Everyone declared Sariska a “basket case.”

Does Rajasthan deserve its tigers? Tough question to answer. I think India does not deserve its tigers. But we have to remember that tiger are not just our national heritage, they are our planet’s heritage. And I don’t think we, Indians, deserve to be the guardian of this global treasure. Why? Because despite such a big outcry nothing really happened. We were very happy shouting and cursing the Forest Department but we just plain refused to really correct the situation. A few very superficial measures were undertaken and we were happy. The conservationists declared that the crisis was over and “good news” started pouring from all over. We started hearing things like “massive budgetary outlay for tiger protection from now on, army commandos deployed in tiger reserves, tiger reserves have been sealed and declared inviolate” and so on. No such thing happened at the ground level. The budgets did go up – from pathetically low to very low, army commandos were actually retired army personnel who had no understanding of wildlife, Wildlife issues rose from lowest priority for the government to very low priority. Basically nothing changed at the ground level.

There was some genuine good news. Ranthambhore, which had almost got decimated, revived but that was mainly because a few officers and officials worked their heart out. Corbett was another good news – again thanks to a handful of officers and officials. There was no change in the outlook of the Government of India, except for some very slick media management. And most of the media lapped it up. There were a few sane voices in the media – journalists like Bittu Sehgal – the editor of Sanctuary magazine, Jay Mazoomdaar, Prerna Singh Bindra and a few more but their voices were partially drowned out in the din.

About a year ago the Rajasthan Forest Department declared that they would relocate tigers from Ranthambhore to Sariska to right the wrong……….

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One great thing about living in Ranthambhore is that you end up meeting some of the best nature photographers in the world. I have been fortunate and have worked with some of the biggest names in nature photography. The best time I have ever had – fun and learning – was the two months or so that I spent with Andy Rouse this year.

About a year ago I got a mail from Andy. I don’t know how he got my contact. In the mail he mentioned that he was coming to India to shoot and was vaguely interested in coming to Ranthambhore. He had asked me a few very “tricky” questions about shooting conditions in Ranthambhore basically to test if I knew what I was talking about or not. Apparently I passed the test. I doubt if he would have come to Ranthambhore if I had failed. We exchanged a few zillion mails before he finally came down in March with Tracey Rich.

Just a few months before he came down to India he had changed his entire equipment from Canon to Nikon. He was carrying 2 Nikon D3s (probably the most awesome 35 mm format DSLR that I have seen) and four lenses. His main gear was the D3 with a 200 to 400 mm Vibration Reduction lens – which I would rate as the best gear for shooting tigers. One of these days the Bill Gates foundation is going to send me a lot of money (apparently they help out the under privileged a lot) and I am going to buy this gear.

The three of us – Andy, Tracey and I – spent a week in Ranthambhore in the middle of March. We had the best tiger driver in the world – Salim Ali – who is a naturalist in Ranthambhore but had been driving a jeep here for over 20 years before he became a naturalist. He has helped make about 10 wildlife documentaries and understands Ranthambhore (besides a dozen more wildlife areas in India) better than anyone alive. And boy did we have a blast. Andy shoots amazingly well, so he obviously got some mind-blowing pictures. But what was more surprising was that me – Aditya Singh – with my humble gear and limited experience ended up getting many pictures that were in focus. He taught me how to pan – I mean he taught me but I still have not learnt it as yet. I routinely miss getting the subject in frame, keep crashing my lens against whatever is nearby etc etc – basically keep messing up. However, I have promised Tracey that one day my panning shot of a “tiger chasing a deer” is going to win the BBC wildlife photographer of the year award. One day – hopefully within this century.

Besides panning they also taught me one more really important thing – that is – to delete, delete, delete. Sorry I meant edit, edit, edit but for guys like me delete and edit is generally speaking the same thing. Just before I met Andy Rouse, I had two 500 Gigabyte hard drives that were full of RAW images. Now I am planning to sell both of them because all the decent pictures that I have will fit in a 4 Gigabyte CF card. (Anyone interested in buying two 500 GB Lacie hard drive can drop me a mail – I will sell them cheap).

There were a few things that we taught Mr. Andy Rouse (or Sandy Grouse, as we called him). One was how to do some serious beer drinking – from sunrise to sunset. If you check his profile on facebook, you will find a picture of him all painted up and slightly (actually seriously) drunk on Kingfisher beer. Guess who took that picture and guess who opened all those 20 bottles of beer – yes sir you got it right (that’s if you got Dicky Singh as the answer). That was on Holi (the Hindu festival of colours – as you would have guessed both Salim and I are great Hindus). That afternoon Tracey and Poonam (my wife – in case you did not know that – you moreons) were the only two sober people at The Ranthambhore Bagh. Salim claims that he was sober but Tracey did not think so, specially after he almost crashed the jeep a dozen times in the afternoon safari.

After a week in Ranthambhore, Tracey, Andy and I left for Kaziranga in Assam. Kaziranga was good but not a patch on Ranthambhore – nothing is a patch on Ranthambhore, when it is rocking and believe me Ranthambhore was rocking in March. Machali – the tigress who is the lady of the lakes – and her three nearly full grown female cubs were at their best.

Tracey and Andy went off to Bandhavgarh after a few days in Kaziranga, while I stayed on for another week. I had hooked up with Nik Devasar and some cool friends from the Delhi Bird Club but that’s for another post.

Towards the end of April Andy came back to Ranthambhore for another few weeks. Tracey had gone back to UK, even though I had offered her a job as the “Honorary Bar Tender” at The Ranthambhore Bagh. This time it was my study time. Andy taught me a lot of amazing things about photography. Unfortunately I can’t tell you about them since they are classified. But yes delete, delete, delete in one of them.

There are two amazing things I have to tell you about that happened in his “second coming”. One was that we finished digging three wells and their associated waterholes in Indala. Thanks to Paramo / Andy Rouse / and a few of my other friends (see my post on Indala). The picture below was taken when one of the wells sprouted for the first time (the good looking guy is me) and that night a male tiger spent the whole night in the water hole.

The second one was a friend of Andy’s – I can’t tell you his name – that’s classified too. A few hints – he is big (horizontally), loves his beer (that probably describes every second man in UK) and the big clue is that if you buy a greeting card in UK, chances are that you have made him some money. I hope you read this Mr. Big Man. Andy has threatened to be back soon. I still have to teach him how to drink Old Monk rum and I have another 4 GB card to fill. Delete, delete, delete. Did I learn anything - that’s for you to guess? All the pictures posted here were taken with Mr. Sandy Grouse, except for the one of me below. Andy took this one and I think it makes me look good. ?

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