Archive for November 2009
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Wildlife migration corridors from Ranthambhore
JAIPUR: After Ranthambore and Sariska, Darrah. Rajasthan is all set to get its third tiger reserve, and India its 39th, very soon. The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has given its in-principle approval to the project at Darrah National Park, which is about 50 km from Kota.
State forest department officials said it was very likely that the first tiger would be relocated to the forests of Darrah by 2011.
The state government had submitted a proposal to the Centre for a tiger reserve at Darrah. NTCA has given its in-principle approval to it. The surplus tigers of Ranthambore will be translocated to Darrah after the area is declared a tiger reserve under Section 83 (v) of the Wildlife Protection Act 2006, said state forest and environment minister Ramlal Jat.
According to the minister, once declared a sanctuary, it will help form a large corridor connecting Sariska, Kota, Bundi and Ranthambore to Madhya Pradesh. This will not only take away the excess visitors from Ranthambore but also help Kota attract a large number of tourists, he said.
The Darrah National Park, also called the Rajiv Gandhi National Park, consists of three wildlife sanctuaries of Darrah, Chambal and Jaswant Sagar. It was declared a national park in 2004 and is spread over a total area of 250 km. It is separated from the Ranthambore national park by another 250 sq km stretch of Ramgarh Vishdhari Wildlife Sanctuary.
The park is the only one to have a perennial source of water from the Chambal Basin with the river running 4 to 5 metres deep in certain stretches.
(The Times of India, TNN 7 November 2009, 05:21am IST)
After reading this I did not know whether to laugh or cry.
The NTCA is in a rush to declare more and more forests as tiger reserves. The fact that a lot of the newly declared reserves, neither have any tiger nor any prey, does not seem to make any difference. Declaring the “Rajiv Gandhi National Park” as a tiger reserve would be really pushing it. In fact it would be a big joke.
The Rajasthan Forest Minister’s statement – “ The surplus tigers of Ranthambore will be translocated to Darrah after the area is declared a tiger reserve ………once declared a sanctuary, it will help form a large corridor connecting Sariska, Kota, Bundi and Ranthambore to Madhya Pradesh. This will not only take away the excess visitors from Ranthambore but also help Kota attract a large number of tourists” – is absolutely ridiculous.
What the minister does not know or did not state is:
1. Ranthambhore does not have surplus tigers : the current official figure is that there are 41 tigers in Ranthambhore tiger reserve. The Ranthambhore tiger reserve is 1334 square kilometers in area. Areas that have 10 or so tigers in 100 square kilometers is considered to be a high density area. By this logic 41 in 1334 square kilometers is not really high, so where do the surplus come from? The ral story is that out of the 1334 kms of Ranthambore tiger reserve - about half the area is the Kela Devi Sanctuary, about one fourth is the Ranthambore national park and most of the balance is the Sawai Mansingh snactuary. (See the map below). The 41 tigers are distributed in the entire tiger reserve as follows - Kela Devi has one, Sawai Mansingh has 5 or 6 and the national park has the rest. In other words, half of the entire tiger reserve just has one tiger and almost all the tigers are within the national park or the immediately adjoining part of the Sawai Mansingh sanctuary. It would be correct to say that the national park has a surplus of tigers but the same can not be said for the entire tiger reserve. In fact Sawai Mansingh sanctuary only gets tigers when there is a surplus inside the national park and Kela Devi sanctuary (which is nearly half the area of the total reserve) has hardly had any tigers in the last decade or so. Tiger do drift there from the national park but they do not last very long in this sanctuary, mainly because this sanctuary has very little prey and almost no protection.
2. There already is a corridor between Ranthambhore national park and Darrah wildlife sanctuary via the forests of Sawai Mansingh sanctuary, Lakheri, Talwas and Ramgarh sanctuary. Tiger in the past have gone all the way to Darrah and in the near future have been going till the forests of Lakheri. In reality this corridor is a death trap because in the last 10 years not a single tiger that drifted this way survived for long. There is very little prey and even less protection south of the Sawai Man Singh sanctuary. The adjoining forests of Madhya Pradesh (MP) are in an even worse state, in fact, this part of MP is the poaching heartland of India. Till about two decades ago this entire corridor was an excellent wilderness area. The last tigers of Darrah and Ramgarh died out without making any noise at all) in the early 1990s. Since then this corridor has been taking a thrashing at the hands of man. Right now the forest canopy still exists but the prey species (deer, wild pigs etc) are gone. There is a lot of cattle that the tiger can kill but that leads to conflicts with man, which are often lethal for the wild animal.
3. The above mentioned corridor has no links whatsoever with Sariska, which is a true “ecological island” with no scope at all for any inwards or outward migration of wild animals. For a tiger to get from Sariska to Ranthambhore, he will have to cross a very busy national highway, miles and miles of agricultural fields, numerous villages and at least three large towns besides a number of small ones. A really tough task for any tiger.
4. This will not only take away the excess visitors from Ranthambore but also help Kota attract a large number of tourists, said the minister. This is a pretty heavy price to pay to attract tourists to Kota.
What is needed is active and prolonged protection along this forested belt and it needs to be done now. A few years later may be too late. What is definitely not needed is to tranquilize a few tigers from inside Ranthambhore national park and fly them to Darrah Sanctuary and hope that they flourish there. Some of these tigers may have to turn vegetarian in Darrah since there is not enough meat on hooves there for them.
Don’t just take my word for it. Read what the Ranthambhore Project Tiger Management Plan 2001-2011 has to say about this (pasted below). The last para is the most interesting. (RTR means Ranthambhore tiger reserve and RNP is the Ranthambhore national park).
Ecological Boundaries:-
The flora and fauna of both Vindhyan and Aravalli hill ranges exist in the Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve. The forests of both the ranges were continuous in the past but due to fragmentation of vegetation cover the RTR has become an ecological island.
The RNP adjoins Keladevi sanctuary in the N.E. separated by river Banas, but the river does not present any barrier for the wild life to cross over. The Keladevi sanctuary is linked to the forest areas of Dholpur through a continuous forest tract. The forests of Keladevi sanctuary are gradually improving with increased level of protection, ban on migratory sheep and participatory forest protection strategy adopted by the villagers in the form of “Kulhadi Band (ban on use of axe) Panchayat” under the guidance of forest department.
In the south west of the RNP, Sawai Mansingh Sanctuary & Kuwalji Closed Area extend up to river Chakal and beyond. The adjoining forest areas of Bundi further connects RTR to forest areas of Kota. Therefore, a whole corridor is available for the movement of wildlife provided the adjoining areas of Dholpur, Bharatpur, Bundi and Kota districts also gets adequate protection. In fact, the area mentioned above can be a contiguous area for the Tiger.
The river Chambal in South to South East of RTR and the river Banas in North East to South East of the RNP forms a seasonal barrier to the wildlife to migrate from one area to another but there are reports of occasional presence of non-resident wild dogs in RTR and migration of wild animals such as Tigers and Leopard in Keladevi Sanctuary from M.P. forest area crossing the Chambal river as per the indirect evidences gathered from the Maharaja of Karauli.
On all other sides, RTR is surrounded by agricultural revenue land but the abundant presence of Black buck, Chinkara, Blue Bull, Smaller cats, Jackals & Foxes in the agricultural fields indicate that there is no barrier to these mammals and the area as a whole is rich in wildlife. Even tigers and panthers are reported from the habitation areas like Chouth Ka Barwada & Bhagwatgarh, which are nearly 30 Kms from RTR.
We may say that a belt of 50 Kms width along the left banks of the river Chambal from Kota up to Dholpur can be considered as the ecological boundary for the Tigers and other wild life of RTR.
The description given above indicates that a large tract constitutes the ecological boundary of RTR, but the fact remains that with the degradation of forest area, expansion of agriculture fields and other land uses, the ecological boundary tends to limit up to RTR area only in a true sense.
View Rajasthan Wildlife Corridors in a larger map
A great article
Wildlife is on the brink
Wildlife is on the brink and it is high time we took a critical look at our conservation realities
and policies.
Most that share landscapes with wildlife, for instance, live extremely low
impact lives yet they pay the biggest cost for conservation.
Question of survival: Tribal settlements in Orissa¹s Simlipal Biosphere
Reserve.
If there is one dominating sense about the fate of wildlife in this country,
it is that of Œthe end¹. The wiping out of the tiger from the Sariska and
Panna Tiger Reserves has been headline news; poaching and trading in
wildlife parts con tinues unabated; human wildlife conflict ‹ be it with
carnivores like leopards or tigers, large mammals like elephants or smaller
animals like wild boar, deer or monkeys ‹ is seriously on the rise; lakes,
rivers and other wetlands are either being dammed, poisoned or encroached
upon; climate change threatens to change the world in an unprecedented
manner and as a combined consequence wildlife numbers are dwindling
precariously and many species of birds, animals and plants stand dangerously
close to the precipice of extinction.
The Forest Rights Act
An important new twist was added to wildlife conservation debates a couple
of years ago with the enactment of the Scheduled Tribes and Other
Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, popularly
known as the Forest Rights Act (FRA). The debate over this act has been
volatile and the opposition, particularly from a section of wildlife
conservationists and former forest officers, has been and continues to be
strong. A lot has been written about these concerns and strong affirmation
came from a rather unlikely source around a year ago. A report in Newsweek
(³India¹s missing tigers², May 5, 2008) took the argument to an unexpected
extreme when it argued that Œdemocracy and economic development¹ were
driving the tiger to extinction in India.
Many might actually agree with this articulation, but even a cursory
analysis will reveal that the conclusions are as ill-informed as they are
short sighted. An entire argument cannot be built on the analysis of and
comment on just one piece of recent legislation in the country: the FRA. The
law is a recent one and its implementation, if it is happening at all, has
just about begun. While fears about forest and wildlife loss may indeed be
justified, selectively wiping away history and placing the responsibility
for the tiger¹s demise at the door of this one legislation and one set of
people is not only irresponsible but also can be counter-productive.
Particularly so since because one aspect of India¹s conservation history ‹
the role of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ‹ continues to be repeatedly
invoked, like in the Newsweek piece. A whole generation of wildlife
enthusiasts and conservationists believe, and with good reason, that Indira
Gandhi ensured that Indian wildlife still has some hope. She was the
architect of critical legislations and frameworks that certainly helped
protect wildlife and her personal interest and intervention like in the case
of Silent Valley in Kerala ensured that many critical habitats were saved.
It is a legacy we cannot deny or wish away, but we also need to ask whether
we can keep hanging on to the past? Our socio-political-economic-cultural
realities have changed drastically since her time. It is the same nation and
yet it is different . Wildlife conservation today, like anything else, has
to be placed within this rapidly changing context. It is crucial to
recognise that the same wildlife conservation policies will not succeed
today just because they did in a different era. If she were alive today,
Mrs. Gandhi would perhaps have agreed.
There is also a whole new Œpost-Indira Gandhi¹ generation of wildlife
biologists involved in cutting edge research across wild India. Many of
their formulations of problems and solutions are extremely nuanced and far
more representative of realities on the ground. They need to be asked and
they need to be listened to.
Condemning the most vulnerable
It is no one¹s case that wildlife conservation is easy. The challenges are
immense and no one but the most optimistic will argue that the future for
our wildlife is bright and hopeful. However, blaming the poor and the
tribal; demanding their displacement to protect wildlife; seeking stricter
and military-like protection is the wrong place to start. By doing this we
are also ignoring many other realities. Most of the communities that share
landscapes with wildlife, for instance, live extremely low impact lives and
yet they are made to pay the biggest cost for conservation.
It is also not a coincidence that innumerable people¹s agitations across the
country today are fighting policies and projects (big dams, large scale
mining, increased industrialisation) that predate on the basic survival of
forest and land dependant communities. Neither is it a coincidence that many
of these are important habitats that support a great diversity of threatened
flora and fauna. It is as important that we recognise this overlap as it is
for us to recognise that both communities and wildlife are, together, losing
this battle. Nothing ‹ be it the laws and the courts, the politicians and
the bureaucrats or the media and the wildlife conservationists ‹ are able to
help them.
Hope and the FRA
Increased mining across the country, for instance, has been one of the most
significant sources of concern for its impact on forests, tribal communities
and important wildlife populations. In an ironic twist now, it is being
suggested that the FRA might actually be the only hope for preventing mining
in forest and wildlife rich areas. Efforts towards this end are already
being made in states like Orissa and in particular in the Niyamgiri hills
where the Dongaria Kondh Tribal community itself is fighting to save the
forests. Additional hope has been kindled following the July 30, 2009
notification of the MoEF stating the forest land diversion for non-forest
purposes should ensure compliance with the provisions of the FRA.
In this larger context then, it comes across as completely unfair to argue
that rights for the poor, the marginalised and the historically
dis-privileged necessarily means the demise of our wildlife? Can we turn the
question and wonder if, in fact, ³it is not too much democracy but too
little of it that lies at the root our wildlife crisis?² That a more
empowered people might actually fight better and more successfully? We don¹t
have the answers today; what we do have is the choice of which question we
will ask.