Ranthambhore – Sariska and tiger shuttle – Part II

……….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…

Indala Plateau – Final for this year

We finally got all the work in Indala finished and did it just in time. The monsoons have arrived here and the rains make most of the tracks to Indala impassable. All the three wells were dug some time ago, the waterholes are ready, the water recharging structures done and the Deputy Field Director has…

Indala Plateau

In my last post I had written about digging of wells and making waterholes in the Indala plateau. We just finished digging the third well and have got three water holes going already. The three wells were dug near non-perennial streams and in places where there were “small wells” (locally known as kui) on such…

Tiger, Tribals and others like us

For the last few weeks there is this big debate going on in India between tiger conservationists and tribal activists. The more notable one worth reading are by Pankaj Sekhsaria of Kalpavriksh and Sunita Narain of Centre for Science and Environment. The problem with tiger conservation is that it is much more complicated that it…

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…

February 2005

After the Operation Co-operation came to a premature end, all of us got pretty frustrated. I got back to my work, which is running a safari lodge an since February is a very busy month; I did not have time for any further activism. Dharmendra and Vakil (the Tiger watch team) took to some serious…

Operation Co-operation III

After our successful raid of 29th January 2005, where we busted Rajmal Mogiya (who much later on admitted to his involvement in the killing of 5 tigers), we were on top of the world. The paper work after the raid took all night to complete and we went to sleep around 10:00 AM the next…

Operation Co-operation II

On the 29th of January 2005, Vakil got some information about a Mogiya tribal – Rajmal -who was regularly killing and selling the meat of Sambar deer and Wild Boar, in Bhairopura village in the Man Singh Sanctuary, a part of the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve. We met the Deputy Field Director – Mr. Bhardwaj –…

Operation Co-operation I

By the second week of January 2005, the Tiger watch team had started working on a presen-tation to highlight what they thought was wrong with the Ranthambore national park. They wanted to show this on a seminar of “WWF India” , which was to be held on 27th January in Delhi. The problems that they…