Aditya ‘Dicky’ Singh

Bharatpur is small town (by Indian standards – which means a population of about 200,000 people) that is half way on the train route from Ranthambhore to Delhi. Bharatpur is home to one of the best bird sanctuaries in India – namely the Keola Deo Ghana National Park. I left for Bharatpur for a week in the first week of February.

Bharatpur has a number of small and big lodges but the only one that I stay in is The Birder’s Inn. The owner of The Birder’s Inn – Teerath Singh is a great friend of mine. Besides owning and running this lodge he also leads wildlife tours on a freelance basis. My guides (or Gurus – to be more precise) in Bharatpur are Laxmi Mudgal (who is by far the best birder in Bharatpur) and Rajeev (who owns and runs a drug store – that is when he not busy taking pictures in the bird sanctuary). If I go to Bharatpur and do not stay with Teerath, he would probably kill me. Birder’s Inn is a small 12-room lodge but a great place – good food, clean room and great company – and they sure know how to get you drunk on dark rum.

Situated at the confluence of the Gambhir and Banganga rivers in the Bharatpur district of Rajasthan, the sanctuary was originally a natural depression prone to seasonal flooding. Over a period of time it developed into a lush, thriving system of freshwater marshes that attracted a large and diverse population of migratory birds. The Maharajas of Bharatpur added some bunds (dykes) and developed it as a duck shooting reserve. You can see the list of their exploits inside the park. Later, when hunting was stopped, it was deemed a Bird Sanctuary and later a National Park.

The park is generically called Bharatpur, after the town but its official name is Keoladeo Ghana. “Ghana” means dense while Keoladeo is derived from the Shiva temple situated at the heart of the park. Shiva, in his form of Pashupati or Lord of the Animals is the protector of the park’s various species. The fascinating mix of wetlands, woodlands, woodland swamps and dry grasslands has blessed the park with a rich biologically diverse birdlife. Keoladeo and its surrounding area host over 400 bird species and a single day trip may yield 140 species.

Bharatpur is paradise for outdoor photographers, particularly when there is no water shortage in the Park. Most of the water for the Park in Bharatpur comes from the Pachana dam on the non-perennial river Gambhir. However, for the last few years some local politicians have been ensuring that this water is diverted for a small group of rich farmers, who grow mustard in their field around the dam. Diverting this water makes a small group of rich farmers (who are politically very vocal) richer. However, there are many small and marginal farmers (who are not so politically influential) who make a living growing vegetables on the river bed of Gambhir, whose economy take a big hit when the water from Pachana dam is not released for Bharatpur. The once thriving tourism industry of Bharatpur (that employs over 20,000 people – directly and indirectly) also takes a huge hit, whenever the water from Pachana dam is not released for Bharatpur.

No Comments | Read full story »

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 activism. They started getting in touch with the local and national media and started highlighting the plight of Ranthambhore in the media. The disappearance of tigers from Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan was still fresh news and the media really took the Rajasthan Forest department apart. I had no role to play in all of this, though many people in the Rajasthan Forest Department still believe that I was instrumental in spreading “ false stories” about Ranthambhore in the media. Some of them along with the local police and administration were gunning for us but they did not get their chance till almost a year later.

The media lapped up all the news about Ranthambhore and published them after “spicing” them up a bit. The Rajasthan Forest Department had to bear the brunt of the media onslaught. The international media picked some of this news up and that added to the fire.

Tiger Watch put together a small project for gathering information on poaching around Ranthambhore and started looking for funding for the project. About a month later they got the funds though Fateh Singh’s son’s Non Governmental Agency and they started collecting information from around Ranthambhore.

In the first week of February I left for Bharatpur (Keola Deo Ghana Bird Sanctuary) for a week. By that time I was getting pretty fed up with all the politics that went with tiger conservation.

2 Comments | Read full story »

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 morning. On the 30th of January all of us slept and later in the night we celebrated. As a result, there were no raids on the 30th.

On the 31st January, the Deputy Field Director (Mr. G.S. Bhardwaj) decided to accompany us on a raid in the Khandar fort area that lies in the North-east end of the Ranthambore National Park. We left around 10:00 in the morning – not the best time to go for a raid – in a convoy of two Forest Department jeeps and one truck. There were about 40 people. We first went to small village about 10 kilometers short of Khandar – where a few families of “Bagariya” tribals live. The Bagariyas, like the Mogiyas, are a former hunter-gatherer tribe, who now kill animals mainly for bush meat. They are not as lethal as the Mogiyas but are no friends of wild animals. We searched about 10 odd huts that were there in the settlement but did not find anything substantial. We did find a small cooking pot with some wild boar meat but since we could not ascertain, who the pot belonged to, we could not take any action. A large crowd had gathered around and the word had spread that the Forest department officials were on the prowl looking for poachers.

Around noon we went to a small village called Bhaopura on the banks of river Banas towards the North of the Ranthambhore National Park. On the outskirts of the village, on top of a small hillock was a small hut that we were told belonged to a Mogiya. There was no way a jeep could have reached even close to the hut, so we had to walk the last half kilometers or so. By the time we reached the hut, all the men had disappeared and there were only two small kids and one old woman. We asked the women if she had heard of any hunting in the area and she swore that they were law abiding citizens and that there was no hunting at all in the area. We still searched the area around the hut and after about 15 minutes found a small plastic bag that contained two nails of Sloth Bear and some black coloured hair that we believed came off a bear (see pictures below). The woman was arrested and taken to the Forest Office in Khandar. By that time it was getting close to sunset and we headed back.

The next day we went to the Deputy Field Director’s office and he informed us that the Operation Co-operation was off because the officials of the “Flying Squad” (which is in-charge of all anti-poaching operations) were getting “demoralized.” That was the end of it – at least for us. For the next two weeks or so the Forest Department did carry out a series of raids, which did not result in any arrests. Mainly because the word was out that a lot of raids would happen in the next few days and most of the poachers had just disappeared.

Did the Operation-cooperation achieve anything worthwhile? It did though indirectly. The Operation did not arrest many people but it did scare the poachers who had no choice but to disappear. Many months later, we asked a poacher (Devi Singh – who was one of the king pins) when poaching actually stopped. He told us that most of the poachers left the area around Ranthambore after the “series of raids that were conducted in the end of January.” In that sense the Operation Co-oeration and the series of raids that followed were the main reason for the end of large scale poaching around Ranthambhore that started in the beginning of 2003.

No Comments | Read full story »

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 – in the morning and gave him the information. He gave us the go ahead for conducting a raid on this Mogiyas area and asked us to go along with the Range Officer (Project Tiger) and some forest guards. We were supposed to meet the officer in the Raj Bagh Forest Check post at sunset.

In the evening 5 of us – Dharmendra Khandal (Field Biologist), Vakil Mohammed (Safari jeep owner and driver), Rafiq (Nature Guide), Lokesh (a hawker who make a living selling T-shirts to tourists) and I – left for the Raj Bagh check post. The Range Officer along with a driver and a forest guard was waiting for us. He wanted to take us for “patrolling” along the main highway to Madhya Pradesh (the central Indian state that borders Ranthambhore). We told him our plan about trying to bust Rajmal Mogiya. He was not at all keen on any raid and tried to convince us that such raids can be very “risky” in the night and that there were too few of us to execute it. That did not make sense to us because we thought that 8 people (5 of us and three forest officials, including the ranger, who was armed) were more than enough to catch one man who would be in a hut in an agricultural field, way outside the village. After a lot of arguments (which I would not even like to mention) he agreed to come along but insisted that neither he nor any of the forest official would carry out the actual raid. They said that they would take us to the location where we thought Rajmal would be and they would wait near that location, while the 5 of us carried out the actual raid. In case they thought that the raid would get out of hand they would leave. That was acceptable to us and we left.

We reached Bhairopura at midnight and soon located Rajmal’s beaten up motorcycle parked at the edge of an agricultural field. The ranger’s jeep dropped us close to where the motor-cycle was parked and we went inside the fenced field while the forest officials waited in the jeep. We found Rajmal sleeping on a wooden cot. There were a few empty bottles of “moonshine” alcohol near the bed and one cooking pot. Rajmal was obviously knocked out drunk. We checked the cooking pot and found a lot of blood and some meat sticking to the base of the pot. We also found a wooden log that was covered with blood and it appeared as if someone had slaughtered an animal on top of this log. That was all we needed to be con-vinced that Rajmal had killed some wild animal recently. We surrounded Rajmal’s cot and shook him awake. As soon as he got up he started shouting and tried to run. We pinned him down but he continued to shout as if he was trying to warn someone else. There was a lot of shouting and I don’t clearly remember the sequence of events that followed for the next 15 minutes or so. I remember the Forest jeep driving up to the edge of the field, a lot of pushing and shoving between Rajmal and three of us. Suddenly another man (who was probably sleeping in another cot close by) got up and started running. Lokesh and Dharmendra ran after him and caught him after a brief chase. By that time the ranger was screaming at us to get out of there. We put the two people that we had caught inside the jeep and got out of there. We drove straight to the Falodi Range Office.

In the Falodi Range Office – the Falodi Range Officer – Mr. Kala, a burly Sikh officer – started interrogating Rajmal and the other person. After a lot of very patient cross question-ing, Rajmal admitted that he had killed a porcupine. We did not believe him because the amount of blood that we had seen could not have come out of a small animal like the porcu-pine. That’s when Mr. Kala decided that we should go back to the location where we had caught Rajmal and search the entire place with a toothcomb. It was almost four in the morn-ing by the time we reached the filed and all of us were very excited. After searching the field for an hour we found two gunnysacks full of Sambar deer (Cervus unicolor - see picture below) meat. The deer had been cut up into large sized pieces and stuffed in the sack. Soon we found a loaded gun (a muzzle loader) and a lot of gunpowder. Rajmal was busted – fair and square – and he ad-mitted that he had killed the sambar the night before and that he had sold half the meat. He also told us that the other person that we had caught was also involved in the sale.

We got together all the evidence and took both the persons that we had caught to the Forest Department’s head quarters in the Sawai Madhopur town. The Deputy Field Director (Mr. Bhardwaj) and a lot of other forest officials were waiting for us. Mr. Kala had informed them about the raid. It took another few hours to get the entire paperwork (for their prosecution) done and by the time we were finished it was almost noon. We were exhausted but did not feel it because of the excitement. All of us were on top of the world and felt that we had done our bit to help save Ranthambhore’s wildlife.

It felt good.

Top: Rajmal’s wife and one of his three daughter-in-laws, a few days after Rajmal Mogiya was arrested by us for killing a Sambar deer. At that time we did not know that he was involved in killing of tigers. A few months later we came to know that between 2003 and 2004 he was involved in the poaching of over 6 tigers in and around Ranthambhore.

No Comments | Read full story »

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 wanted to highlight were mainly Habitat destruction that was going on around the tiger reserve and the “missing tigers” of Ranthambore. At that point in time, we knew that many tigers of Ranthambhore were missing but we were not sure what had happened to them and how did they go missing. We were not even sure how many tigers were missing. Tiger watch claimed that there were 18 tigers missing but I do not think that even they were sure about it. I did know for a fact that we could easily identify 24 dif-ferent tigers, when we were working on a film project (which came to an end in May 2002) for BBC. By the early 2005, only 6 of these 24 were still around. That makes it “at least”18 and not just 18.

Bittu Sahgal, the editor of “Sanctuary magazine” – India’s only wild life magazine – was in Ranthambore in the third week of January. After meeting the Deputy Field Director, he asked us to go meet him and work with him. We – Dharmendra Khandal and I – went to meet Mr. Bhardwaj (the Deputy Field Director) on the 26th of January 2005. After a long discussion, which got pretty heated at times, Mr. Bhardwaj decided to initiate intensive pa-trolling by the Forest Department officials and volunteers like us. He decided to call this “Operation Co-operation.”

On the 27th January we headed out after sunset for our first job. There 5 volunteers – Dharmendra Khandal (a Field Biologist), Ashlesh Sharma and Hemraj Meena (both are nature guides that take tourists to the park), Vakil Mohammed (a tourist safari jeep owner-driver) and I. We were to meet 3 forest guards in the Bodal chowki and work as per their instruc-tions. The guards told us that we were to go to a point on the Mansarovar Road (Mansarovar is a large lake at the edge of the park) and set up a road-block there to “look for suspected poacher.” We did not think that this was a great idea but we went along with them anyways. Why did we think that this was not a good idea? Because setting up a road-block to nab poachers is a bit like throwing a baited fishing line in the Loch Ness and hoping that the monster will grab it. If the poachers were so stupid then most of them would have been caught by now. We did set up a road-block but soon got bored of hanging around there. Va-kil was the first one out of us to express that he had come out to catch poachers and not for conducting a traffic survey. He had some information about a suspected poacher (I would not name him because he is still at large) coming to small village near Khandar (a small town on the northeast edge of the park – from where Vakil hails). We decided to go there and try to nab him. One of three guards decided to accompany us while the other two de-cided to stay at the road-block and off we went to Khandar in my brand new jeep.

Only when we reached the outskirts of the village did we realize what we were getting into. Half the male population of the village had a criminal record and if they ever realized that we had no back up they would have beaten the living day lights out of us. We decided to pretend that we were some special police and had a lot of back up. Most of us wear military jackets etc so we could pass of as some special police group. We parked the jeep a slight distance away from the village and entered the village. We did not find the guy we had come for but we did find his grown up son who was just beginning to cook a few partridges (game birds that are protected by the Indian law). We grabbed the guy and whatever evidence we could gather fast – like the cooking pot with the meat in it, a knife and an axe that were covered with blood, some turtle shells etc – and tried to take the guy to the jeep. That’s when the entire village (about a dozen houses) came out of their houses and surrounded us. There was a lot of screaming and shouting and we were playing the part of special police force so well that all of them still think that they were raided by a special force. The villagers stayed with us all the way to the jeep but neither tried to stop us nor did they try to touch us. They just kept staring at us. We got the guy we had caught inside the jeep and got out of there fast. We took this guy to the Khandar range of the Ranthambore national park and handed him over to the Range officer with whatever evidence that we had gathered – which was enough to put him behind bars for a few months. That was the end of our operation and we headed home. The next day we learnt that the Range Officer had discarded the turtle shells as evidence ( and legally they would have been the most incriminating). As a result the case was very weak and the guy got bail from the courts immediately. So much for our first raid to save Ranthambhore.

1 Comment | Read full story »

By the middle of January 2005, it became public that there were no tigers left in Sariska ti-ger reserve in north-eastern Rajasthan. It was the Indian national daily – “Indian Express” - that first broke this news. Incidentally, this is the same newspaper, that had over a decade earlier broken the news about the Second tiger crisis. Bengal tigers of India do owe a lot to the Indian Express.

For the last few months there were very strong and persistent rumours that there were no tigers left in Sariska. The last tiger that was seen alive by visitors was before July. There were reports of some people seeing a tiger in November and they were probably true but since they have not produced a photograph as yet, most people do not believe the reports. In November 2004 a friend of mine had met a researcher from Wildlife Institute of India, who was doing Field work in Sariska. He had told my friend that his entire team had not seen any evidence of presence of tigers in Sariska, for the last four months.

I met Jay Mazumdar, the Indian Express reporter, who first broke the Sariska disaster story in the beginning of February 2005, when he had come to Ranthambore national park. He had a very interesting story to tell us about his Sariska adventure. Jay, is a great guy who is very fond of visiting wilderness areas. He was a regular visitor to Sariska, which is barely 4 hours drive from his house. He told us that during his last three visits to Sariska he did not see any evidence of a tiger. His naturalist and driver in Sariska used to promise him that they would definitely “show him a tiger when he returns for his next visit.” When he went to Sariska in the end of December 2004, the naturalist told him that he personally had not seen a tiger for over 7 months. That got Jay’s journalist instincts rocking. He did some more re-search and found out that no one had seen a tiger for over 6 months – forget seeing a tiger, they had not even seen pugmarks of tigers. Later he went and interviewed the District Forest Officer or DFO – Mr. R.S. Shekhawat (who is now the Deputy Field Director of Rantham-bore national park) – an honest, upright and hard working officer. The DFO told Jay that he had been posted in Sariska in the month of August 2004 and he had not seen any evidence of the presence of tigers since he had been posted there. Jay came back from his trip and started working on the biggest wildlife related news of the decade for India. He admitted that he was initially hesitant about proclaiming, that “there were no tigers left in Sariska.”

One of the very few times that I have seen a Striped Hyena in the daylight was this one in Sariska tiger reserve

Anyways in the third week of January the Indian Express headlines screamed “There are no tigers in Sariska” and all hell broke loose. All the “arm chair” conservationists of India sud-denly woke up from their deep slumber. The Project Tiger and the Forest Department of Ra-jasthan state went in a “total denial” mode. They came out with statements like “the tigers have temporarily migrated to the neighbouring state (a state which does not have any for-ests)”, “they are hiding and will soon be back” and so on. However, by the end of February, even they declared that as far as tigers were concerned, Sariska was dead. The end of a Pro-ject Tiger reserve.

Soon, the poachers started getting arrested and that is when the magnitude of the problem hit all of us. India, unofficially declared the Third tiger crisis, even though the officials were denying that there was any crisis. The Rajasthan state government ordered an enquiry and sacked a very senior officer of the Forest department.

No Comments | Read full story »

The period between early 1990s (after the Second Tiger Crisis) and early 2000s was “by and large” a stable time for tigers in the Project Tiger Reserves. However, during this time tigers of a few reserves, particularly the ones that had insurgency and naxalite problem, such as Manas, Valmiki, Namdapha etc. got decimated. Besides the population of tigers that were not in the Project Tiger reserves did decline dramatically.

By the early 2003 news gradually started filtering from different high profile reserves that the organised professional poachers are back in action. Such “rumors” were routinely being heard in Panna, Ranthambhore, Bandhavgarh, Kanha, Sariska and many other National Parks. The Forest authorities and the Project Tiger Directorate dismissed these as “mere rumors with no scientific basis” but the “rumors” continued. There were, as yet unverified reports from visitors to Tibet, that fresh skins of tigers and leopards are being openly sold and worn by people.

10 tigers that went “missing” in Ranthambore between 2003 and 2005

Environmental Investigation Agency’s Tibet survey
In 2003, a United Kingdom based Non Governmental Organisation - the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) undertook an under cover survey of Tibet and found that the rumors were indeed true. Their report stated the following:
The demand for tiger skins and bones has been going up for the last decade or so. The skins mostly go to Tibet through Nepal, while the bones and other parts go to China and East Asia. (The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) of UK has some excellent documentation of the trade in tiger parts). In the last 2-3 years, as a lot of Tibeteans started getting richer the demand for Tiger and Leopard skins went through the ceiling. To quote from the EIA website: “Travellers to Tibet in 1995 documented the use of tiger and leopard skins to decorate costumes known as chubas, mostly among the Khampa people from eastern Tibet. Historically however, the wearing of skins was restricted to victorious war commanders, rewarded with a patch of skin by the great Kings of Tibet; it is not traditional for every day Tibetans to wear tiger and leopard skin. It was never traditional to wear the entire skin or great swathes of skin. Tragically, anyone with the affluence is able to wear this illegal product”

One of the missing tiger of Ranthambhore that went missing between 2003 and 2005

In 2004 an Indian NGO - the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) - in collboration with the EIA undertook another undercover survey of Tibet and unearthed even more shocking details about the trade in tiger skin. To quote their website:
“Dramatic new findings released today from investigations in China and the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) reveal the previously unknown scale of the trade in tiger and leopard skins. Skins are being openly traded in China and TAR on a scale that triggers real fear over the future of the wild tiger. The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), who first pioneered undercover investigation into crimes against wildlife and the environment 21 years ago, and the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) have just returned from investigations conducted in August this year. EIA and WPSI have obtained footage revealing the staggering size of the market for tiger and leopard skins - much of which is being used for costumes and ceremonial events. Investigators attended horse festivals across the Tibetan plateau where many people, including the organisers and officials, were wearing costumes decorated with tiger and leopard skins, known locally as chubas. The costumes had been bought within the last two years and the traders categorically stated that the tiger skins had come from India. Since EIA’s visit last year, there has been a massive increase in the availability of tiger and leopard skins in Lhasa, TAR. In the 46 shops surveyed, 54 leopard skin chubas and 24 tiger skin chubas were openly displayed, 7 whole fresh leopard skins were presented for sale and, within the space of 24 hours, investigators were offered three whole, fresh tiger skins. In one street alone in Linxia, China, more than 60 whole snow leopard and over 160 fresh leopard skins were openly on display - with many more skins rolled up in the back. The investigators also found over 1,800 otter skins, which are also used to decorate costumes. The quantity and blatant display of tiger and leopard skins in TAR and China demonstrates a lack of awareness among consumers about the plight of the tiger, and the urgent need for targeted enforcement to stop traders from smuggling and illegally selling the skins of tigers and leopards.”

These are the findings of a survey which was carried out in August 2005 by a UK- based NGO, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), and the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI). It confirms earlier reports - notably in October 2003 when China’s Anti-Smuggling Bureau seized a truck in the Tibet Autonomous Region containing 31 tiger, 581 leopard and 778 otter skins from India. In an earlier survey in May 2004, the EIA found whole fresh leopard skins for sale in Lhasa:-

“In August, we found that the open sale and use of fresh tiger, leopard and otter skins is now even more widespread. All the dealers that we talked to said the skins had come from India, and most of the Tibetans wearing them said that they had purchased the skins in the past 18 months. The skin chubas are only worn twice a year, at local horse festivals - where we witnessed dancers, horse riders, visitors, and even organisers and officials, wearing skins - and at the Tibetan New Year.”

One of the missing tigers of Ranthambhore that went missing between 2003 and 2005

Despite all the evidence the evidence, the Forest Department in India and the Project Tiger Directorate, instead of declaring a crisis and taking urgent steps, kept on denying that there any problem with tigers in India. They claimed that the skins that were being routinely seen in Tibet were not from India.

Sariska Tiger Reserve

From the summers of 2004 there were strong and persistent reports - mainly from the people involved in tourism - that no tigers were being sighted in Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan. It was not only that tigers were not being seen but also and more alarmingly, there were no indirect evidence of tiger’s presence (such as pugmarks, scratch marks on trees etc) being found. The Rajasthan Forest Department took the stand that “the tigers had temporarily migrated outside the reserve and would be back after the rains.” The Project Tiger backed this assumption. In January, a leading English national Daily broke the news that there were no tigers left in Sariska. Thus broke open the Third Tiger Crisis. Soon the Rajasthan Forest Department and the Project Tiger Directorate declared an “emergency tiger census” in Sariska. After a two month exercise they finally declared the bad news that Sariska indeed did not have any tigers left.

No Comments | Read full story »

The Project Tiger had a very successful run from its inception to the late 1980s. However, after the heady early year, when the Project Tiger was a great success and it was clear that the tiger population was recovering, the project fell into widespread complacency until, in the early 1990s, tigers disappeared in the famous Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve. A raid on a Tibetan house in Delhi uncovered 400 kg of tiger bones (possibly from some 30 tigers) ready for despatch to China for medicinal use. That provoked the “second crisis”.

In the initial years of the Project Tiger, a handful of very dedicated and knowledgeable officers headed the project. These included people like Mr. Kailash Sankhla (the First Director of the Project), Mr. Billy Arjun Singh, Mr. Fateh Singh Rathore etc. The Project also had the full backing of the Central Government. Mrs. Indira Gandhi - the then Prime Minister of India - took a keen personal interest in the Project.

One of the male tigers that went “missing” from Ranthambhore between 2003 and 2005

Role of the Prime Minister
In the early days of the Project Tiger, Mrs Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, took a very keen personal interest in the Project. At that time the Congress party, which she headed ruled at the centre and almost all the states. One of the biggest help that the Project got from her was that she ensured that there was no political interference with the Project. As a result the managers of the Project had a free hand and faced almost no political resistance from the local politicians. After her demise in 1984, her son Mr. Rajiv Gandhi also showed some con-cern for the Project but the Project Tiger did not receive the same political backing as it had earlier.

Demand for Tiger Parts in east Asia
By the mid 1980s the Project Tiger got mired in red tape and widespread complacency and as a result it lost its direction. At the same time the habitat loss for tiger continued unabated. The final straw for the tigers was that a huge demand for tiger parts arose in East Asia - particularly in China and Taiwan. At the same time the South China Tiger, that was shot by the thousands as a pest under a P.R.C.government sponsored program in the 1950s and 1960s (Laurie 1989), was on the brink of extinction; less than 50 individuals survived. As the name implies, it is na-tive to China, the major consuming market for tiger bones. Since the demand for tiger bones and other parts could not be full filled by the tiger populations of East and South-East Asia, the traders turned their attention to the tiger population of India.

One of the male tigers that went “missing” from Ranthambhore between 2003 and 2005

Consuming nations and trade networks
The demand for tiger bones, used in traditional Chinese medicine and as an ingredient in ton-ics, was clearly the driving force behind increased poaching from the late 1980s. In some cases, poachers have taken only bones and genitals, leaving once-valuable skins behind (Dr. S.K. Dhungel, pers. comm. 1992). Skins are easily identifiable but tiger bones can pass for pigs, cat-tle or other livestock and non-endangered species. The major consuming nations of tiger bones and other derivatives still are China, South Korea and Taiwan. Although comprehensive statistics on trade are not available, an emerging picture showed these nations are unquestionably the end consumers for tiger (and other cats) bones and derivatives. The extremely high demand, combined with virtually non-existent enforce-ment of both international and domestic protection laws in consumer nations, made the tiger’s survival into the next century doubtful. Four of the five extant tiger subspecies once roamed China in the tens of thousands. Today only a handful survive and the South China Tiger, found only in China, is on the verge of ex-tinction because of government bounties offered for skins in the 1950s and 1960s. Between 1951-1955 an average of 400 skins were taken yearly (Laurie 1989).

Having exhausted their own supply of tigers, Chinese traders branched out and it seemed most roads in the trade lead to China. In 1988, twenty sacks of bones were confiscated at a Nepal Post Office near the Tibet border (Martin 1992a); and in 1991, five poachers, believed to be responsible for the deaths of three tigers in Nepal, were arrested for possessing bones from a tiger which had been poisoned (Anon. 1991a). In both cases, the bones were bound for China. Bones from tigers killed in In-dia and Nepal are said to move through Tibet into China via mail, rail or overland (Dr. S. K. Dhungel, pers. comm. 1992). Taiwan and South Korea also imported large amounts of bones over the past decade. A few examples: TRAFFIC Japan reports that between 1985-1990, South Korea imported 1,700 kg of tiger bones, possibly representing the deaths of over 50 Tigers. Twelve years ago, TRAFFIC International cited an article in “Taiwan Trade Trends,” which reported that one Taiwanese brewery alone was importing 2,000 kg of tiger bones yearly, representing the deaths of be-tween 100-200 tigers each year, to make 100,000 bottles of Tiger Bone Wine (Jackson 1991). Bones from Siberian Tigers were easily moved into not only China (Sievers 1992) but also North and South Korea. Besides Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, cambodia and laos were also “illegal importers” of tiger parts. The use of of animal parts in Chinese medicine stems from the belief that substances found in animal products are similar to those found in our own bodies. Therefore, the potency of a sub-stance found in an animal drug will be many times more potent than that of a plant compound.

One of the male tigers that went “missing” from Ranthambhore between 2003 and 2005

Ranthambhore and the Second Tiger Crisis
From the middle of 1980s to the end of 1980s, Ranthambhore was rated as one of the best places in the world to see wild tigers. However, in 1990, after the park reopened for tourists (post monsoons) it became clear to regular visitors that the number of tigers in Ranthambhore had definitely declined.

The end of 1980s was probably the best time for tigers in Ranthambhore. There were over 40 of them – which was amazingly high density for a park that is less than 400 square kilometers. People were coming from all over the world to see tigers. At that time Ranthambhore was definitely the best place in the word to see tigers.
During the end of 1980s the management of the park went to the pits. The problem with man-agement of all protected areas in India is that a lot depends on the quality of the top officers in charge. If they are good the park does very well but if they are incompetent the park can liter-ally be destroyed in a few years. That’s is just want happened to Ranthambhore in the end of 1980s. The officers who were in charge at the highest level were totally incompetent. They ignored all the warning signs that were there for all to see.

One of the male tigers that went “missing” from Ranthambhore between 2003 and 2005

Since the beginning of 1989 the drivers of the jeeps that took tourists around the park had been reporting that the sightings of tigers were going down. The park authorities initially ig-nored these warnings and later on they started prosecuting the drivers who gave them such re-ports. By the beginning of 1990 it became obvious to all but the authorities that tigers were disappearing.

It was the people who were involved in tourism in Ranthambhore who first reported that many commonly seen tigers were missing. The local park authorities tried their best to stem such reports but it was an impossible task. At that time Ranthambhore was a favored destina-tion for photographers and since the best was to identify tiger is the stripe patterns - it became impossible for the park authorities to explain how a lot of commonly seen and frequently pho-tographed tigers were “missing”.

By that time the whole situation had blown up and Ranthambhore became infamous all over the world. The state government instead of actively going after the poaching network took a series of measures that were ridiculous. They set up a one-man committee called the “Kumat committee”, named after the only member retired Justice Kumat. He suggested a series of measures that did not help the tigers in the least and some of these are still a burden for the tigers of Ranthambhore.
When the forest department were unsuccessful in containing the news that tigers were miss-ing, they started denying that their was a problem. In 1991 one man was arrested by the local police in the Sawai Madhopur railway station (the closest rail head from Ranthambhore) with a tiger skin and a sack full of bones. When he was interrogated he admitted to have killed more than half a dozen tigers in the last few months. This blew the lid off the tiger poaching and the media highlighted the entire issue. This is how the second tiger crisis became public. There was a huge out cry all over the world and the Project Tiger was forced to take remedial steps.

One of the male tigers that went “missing” from Ranthambhore between 2003 and 2005

Project Tiger after the Second crisis
After the second tiger crisis the Government took the following steps to revamp the Project Tiger set up:
1. Setting up the Subramanium Committee to look into the issue of prevention of il-legal trade in wildlife and wildlife products. The recommendations of this Committee are, however, yet to be enforced.
2. Setting up the J.J.Dutta Committee to review the management of the tiger project and suggest the future course of action.
3. Organising training of various enforcement agencies in the Wildlife Institute of In-dia for species conservation.
4. Organising an enforcement training workshop in New Delhi, with the help of the US Fish and Wildlife Service and CITES for the enforcement agencies like Customs, Revenue Intelligence, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Coast Gaurds, Border Security Force, State Police, Deputy Directors of Wildlife Preservation and Scientific Organisation like BSI and ZSI.
5. Setting up of a National Coordination Committee for the control of poaching and illegal trade in wildlife with enforcement agencies mentioned above as well as the Army, the Postal Department and so on.
6. The eco-development programme has been taken up around the major protected areas for winning over the support of the fringe dwellers to the cause of wildlife conservation including tiger under national schemes.
7. Initiating India’s Eco-development Project under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in seven protected areas which include seven prime tiger habitats (five tiger reserves).
8. Launching of a public awareness programme to involve NGOs and others for sup-porting the government in its efforts at tiger conservation.
9. Supporting programmes of some institutions and NGOs in exploring tiger trade routes and developing a forensic identification reference manual for tiger parts and products.
10. Taking initiatives with the Government of Nepal and Government of China to evolve an effective strategy to control trafficking of tiger products across international borders.

The Project Tiger Directorate also decided to increase the area under the Project Tiger Re-serves and the Central Government dramatically increased the annual plan budget for the pro-ject. These steps had the desired effect and gradually the tiger population again started increas-ing.

There was also a massive international campaign against the use of tiger parts in traditional medicine and as a result the nations that were earlier freely “importing” tiger parts had to take steps to crub this.

One of the male tigers that went “missing” from Ranthambhore between 2003 and 2005

Ranthambhore after the second crisis
After the disaster of 1990 – 91, Ranthambhore went through a phase of recovery that took over a decade. According to the State government after the poaching of 1990 – 91 there were 16 tigers left in the park. However, the reality was that there were barely 10 tigers left. Some people who have been living here for a long time think that the figure of 10 was too optimistic.

It is not clear how many tiger were left but one mature female and one mature male were surely left alive because in the early 1993 this female gave birth to four female cubs. Most of the present day tigers of Ranthambhore are decedents of this tigress. This family lorded over the entire park and that was a very prominent indicator that there were not many tigers left in the park. Tigers are highly territorial and they actively defend their territories from invasion by other tigers. Tigresses with cubs almost never stray out of their territories with their cubs. So if one tigress was moving around a very large part of the park with her cubs, it indicated that no other tiger had their territory in this part.

Thankfully for Ranthambhore all the four cubs of this litter survived. By 1995 the cubs were fully grown up and had separated from their mother. These four cubs established their inde-pendent territories in Kachida, Bhakola, Lake area and Lahpur respectively. All these five tigers – the mother and her four cubs are now no more. The cub that established her territory in Bhakola never had a litter but the other three bred successfully and repopulated the park.

With a high degree of protection, that the Park got from 1993 to 2003 the park soon bounced back. Tiger numbers went up to over 40 by the time he left Ranthambhore in 2003.

1 Comment | Read full story »

It is estimated that there were nearly 40,000 tigers in the wild in India in 1900. Even if we consider this to be a slight exaggeration there were still a lot of tigers in India at that time. Today, according to the Government there are 3500 tigers but in reality there are less than 2000 left in the wild in India.

The population of India grew dramatically after 1920s, mainly due to improved medical facilities. Just after independence, the leaders in India were under tremendous pressure to increase the amount of land available for agriculture. This was not just because of the dramatic increase in population but also because migrants from East and West Pakistan were demanding land for settlement. The only land that was readily available at that time were prime forests, which were ideal tiger habitat. From the early 1940s to late 1960s large tracts of prime forests were cleared for making more land available for agriculture, dams etc. At that time the nations priorities were definitely not tigers. Forests then were seen as an important economical resource which could be mercilessly harvested in an unsustainable manner. The focus was on getting more land for “development”.

Besides, hunting, which was perfectly legal at that time, was also taking a huge toll on the mega fauna in forests that were not cleared for “development”. Before independence, hunting was mainly the preserve of the royalty and the well heeled. In fact, almost every royal house had protected their own private reserves for hunting and outsiders were not permitted to hunt in such reserves. Most of the present day tiger reserves were the erstwhile hunting reserves of older day royalty.

After India gained independence and the royal houses declined in stature all this changed. Hunting had become “fashionable” and a large number of “Shikar companies” came into existence. Such companies used to facilitate hunting for a handsome fee and both rich Indians and foreigners flocked to prime forests to shoot mega fauna. Tigers were the biggest prize and the government welcomed the revenue that it brought, particularly the foreign exchange.

The First Tiger Crisis

The “first crisis” was in the end of 1960s. At that time the Government of India in collaboration with the the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and now known as World Wide Fund for natureWWF carried out a nation wide census of tigers and reached a conclusion that there were only about 1800 tigers left in India and if something was not done immediately they would be extinct very soon. As a result of this crisis situation, the Project Tiger was born. The Government passed the Wildlife Conservation Act in 1972 and constituted the Project Tiger. The same year hunting was banned in India. Initially, nine forest reserves were selected for special treatment and designated as “Project Tiger Reserves.” This tiger crisis was a result of “shikar” (hunting by well healed people for “fun”) and dramatic loss of forest habitat.

Launch of Project Tiger

Project Tiger, launched in 1973-74, is one of our most successful conservation ventures in the recent times. The project aims at tiger conservation in specially constituted ‘tiger reserves’, which are representative of various bio-geographical regions falling within our country. It strives to maintain a viable tiger population in the natural environment.

An estimate of the tiger population in India, at the turn of the century, placed the figure at 40,000. Subsequently, the first ever all India tiger census was conducted in 1972 which revealed the existence of only 1827 tigers. Various pressures in the later part of the last century led to the progressive decline of wilderness, resulting in the disturbance of viable tiger habitats. At the IUCN General Assembly meeting in Delhi, in 1969, serious concern was voiced about the threat to several species of wildlife and the shrinkage of wilderness in the country. In 1970, a national ban on tiger hunting was imposed and in 1972 the Wildlife Protection Act came into force. A ‘Task Force’ was then set up to formulate a project for tiger conservation with an ecological approach.

The project was launched in 1973, and various tiger reserves were created in the country on a ‘core-buffer’ strategy. The core areas were freed from all sorts of human activities and the buffer areas were subjected to ‘conservation oriented land use’. Management plans were drawn up for each tiger reserve, based on the principles outlined below:
1. Elimination of all forms of human exploitation and biotic disturbance from the core area and rationalization of activities in the buffer zone.
2. Restricting the habitat management only to repair the damages done to the eco-system by human and other interferences, so as to facilitate recovery of the eco-system to its natural state.
3. Monitoring the faunal and floral changes over time and carrying out research about wildlife.

Initially, 9 tiger reserves were established in different States during the period 1973-74, by pooling the resources available with the Central and State Governments. These nine reserves covered an area of about 13,017sq.km - Manas (Assam), Palamau (Bihar), Similipal (Orissa), Corbett (U.P.), Kanha (M.P.), Melghat (Maharashtra), Bandipur (Karnataka), Ranthambhore (Rajasthan) and Sunderbans (West Bengal).

The project started as a ‘Central Sector Scheme’ with the full assistance of Central Government till 1979-80: later, it become a ‘centrally Sponsored Scheme’ from 1980-81, with equal sharing of expenditure between the center and the states.
The W.W.F. has given an assistance of US $ 1 million in the form of equipments, expertise and literature. The various States are also bearing the loss on account of giving up the forestry operations in the reserves.

The main achievements of this project are excellent recovery of the habitat and consequent increase in the tiger population in the reserve areas, from a mere 268 in 9 reserves in 1972 to 1576 in 27 reserves in 2003. Tiger, being at the apex of the food chain, can be considered as the indicator of the stability of the eco-system. For a viable tiger population, a habitat should possess a good prey base, which in turn will depend on an undisturbed forest vegetation. Thus, ‘Project Tiger’, is basically the conservation of the entire eco-system and apart from tigers, all other wild animals also have increased in number in the project areas. In the subsequent ‘Five Year Plans’, the main thrust was to enlarge the core and buffer zones in certain reserves, intensification of protection and ecodevelopment in the buffer zones of existing tiger reserves, creation of additional tiger reserves and strengthening of the research activities.

The management strategy was to identify the limiting factors and to mitigate them by suitable management. The damages done to the habitat were to be rectified, so as to facilitate the recovery of eco-system to the maximum possible extent. Management practices which tend to push the wildlife populations beyond the carrying capacity of the habitat were carefully avoided. A minimum core of 300 sq. km. with a sizeable buffer was recommended for each project area. The overall administration of the project is monitored by a ‘Steering Committee’. The execution of the project is done by the respective State Governments. A ‘Field Director’ is appointed for each reserve, who is assisted by the field and technical personnel. The Chief Wildlife warden in various States are responsible for the field execution. At the Centre, a full-fledged ‘Director’ of the project coordinates the work for the country.

Objectives of Project Tiger
The main objective of Project Tiger is to ensure a viable population of tiger in India for scientific , economic , aesthetic , cultural and ecological values and to preserve for all time, areas of biological importance as a natural heritage for the benefit, education and enjoyment of the people. Main objectives under the scheme include wildlife management, protection measures and site specific ecodevelopment to reduce the dependency of local communities on tiger reserve resources.

Initially, the Project started with 9 tiger reserves, covering an area of 16,339 sq.km., with a population of 268 tigers. At present there are 27 tiger reserves covering an area of 37761 sq.km., with a population of 1498 tigers. This amounts to almost 1.14% of the total geographical area of the country. The selection of reserves was guided by representation of ecotypical wilderness areas across the biogeographic range of tiger distribution in the country. Project Tiger is undisputedly a custodian of major gene pool. It is also a repository of some of the most valuable ecosystem and habitats for wildlife.

Strategy
Tiger Reserves are constituted on a ‘core-buffer’ strategy. The core area is kept free of biotic disturbances and forestry operations, where collection of minor forest produce, grazing, human disturbances are not allowed within. However, the buffer zone is managed as a ‘multiple use area’ with twin objectives of providing habitat supplement to the spill over population of wild animals from the core conservation unit, and to provide site specific eco-developmental inputs to surrounding villages for relieving their impact on the core. Except for the National Parks portion if contained within, normally no relocation of villages is visualised in the buffer area, and forestry operations, Forest Produce collection and other rights and concessions to the local people are permitted in a regulated manner to complement the initiatives in the core unit.

Initial Successes 1973 to 1990
Project Tiger had put the tiger on an assured course of recovery from the brink of extinction, and has resurrected the floral and faunal genetic diversity in some of our unique and endangered wilderness ecosystem. The population of tigers in the country has increased significantly to about 3500 (1990) from less than 2000 at the time of launch of the project.
The effective protection and concerted conservation measures inside the reserves brought about considerable intangible achievements also, viz. arresting erosion, enrichment of water regime thereby improving the water table and overall habitat resurrection. Labour intensive activities in tiger reserves helped in poverty alleviation amongst the most backward sections, and their dependence on forests also reduced.

No Comments | Read full story »

Both Dharmendra and Amit have done their Ph.D. in Botany from Jaipur University, so they were very interested in the flora of southern Rajasthan (that’s where Pratapgarh is). I am not very good with my flora, at least compared to the two of them, so it was a great learning experience for me. I do know most of the common species of Central Aravalis (where Ranthambore national park lies) but Pratapgarh was a slightly different ball game. We saw a lot of interesting plants and my best one was the Caparice zylenica, whose flowers turn from white in the mornings to crimson by the evenings. We also came across four different species of snakes – a Rock Python, a Banded Racer (reported for the first time from that area), a Bronze back tree snake and a Saw Scaled viper (one of Rajasthan’ s most poisonous and common snake). We also came across an old road kill (on the way to the Pratapgarh town, where we had to go to get supplies) of a green coloured Keelback snake. We did not come across many large animals, except a few jackals, wild boars, langur monkeys, Nilgai or the Indian Antelope and quite a few Striped hyenas (that were often mis reported by the villagers as a leopard). The hyenas were totally nocturnal and it was easy to mistake them for a leopard in the nights. Did not see many interesting birds, except for a few nesting Sarus cranes (India’s largest birds) on the drive from Bundi to Chittor (no where near Pratapgarh).

On one of our walk in a kho in Pratapgarh - Dharmendra (yellow head band), Amit (white jacket) and the Assistant Conservator of Forests.

A typical day used to start with getting up at sunrise and heading soon after to the dang in the jeep that Mr Fateh Singh Rathore had kindly leant to us. We would do a quick run over all the tracks to see if we found any pugmarks. After a few hours we would try to find some forest guards to get news about the “cage traps”. All we heard that no leopard had been trapped. The Forest Officers had promised us that we would be informed immediately if they did manage to trap a leopard, so if we did not hear from them by late mornings, we knew that no leopard had been trapped. They did trap a man once – a drunk guy who decided to steal the goat that was used as a bait. He got trapped and had to spend the night in the trap. By 11 in the morning we would get back to our small camp for a meal, that Ram Singh would cook. By noon we would again be on top of the dang, exploring some area that we had not previously explored. We would take the jeep as close to the place ass possible and then start off on foot. By the evening we would be back for dinner. We would again head out in the jeep around 9 in the night, with a powerful night light. We spotted a fair amount of hyenas on such drives but never a leopard.

Sometimes we would have the forests tranquilizing expert with us, though most of the time we were on our own. The tranquilizing expert was a nice Sardarji (Sikh person) from the Udaipur zoo. He told us that he stood no chance of getting any leopard with his dart gun, because the range of the gun was very poor. Besides, even if he did manage to hit the leopard with the dart, the drug would take about 10 minutes to take effect and by then the leopard would be away and hiding. The drug lasts for about 10-15 minutes and after that the leopard would be conscious once again. The point that he made to us (loud and clear) was that if did manage to dart the leopard and even if we knew that the leopard had taken off and hidden in a kho, who would go after him to check if he was conscious or not. He sat on a tree in Pratapgarh all night with a bait tied close by, hoping that the leopard would take the bait. But that never happened. Every third day we went to the Pratapgarh town to get petrol for the jeep and to replenish our supplies. That was time for me to get a few beers. Amit and Dharmendra do not drink any alcohol at all. We spent about 10 days like this. On the 11th day the leopard struck again.

The Bronze backed tree snake. It does not look so big in the picture below.

One evening we reached the Forest camp and a few guards came running towards us. They told us that they had just got a message (about half an hour ago) that a girl had been killed on the other side of the dang. The forest officials and the police department had already left for the area. We drove like mad men but it still took us about half an hour to get to the spot. By then it was getting dark. By the time we reached the spot there were more than a hundred people there looking for the leopard. We learnt that the girl had gone collecting gum with her mother. Around 5 in the evening her mother heard a scream a few meters away and she saw that a leopard had got her daughter by the throat. She ran after the leopard who initially tried to run with the dead girl but later on abandoned her and disappeared. By that time a few more people from the closest village (the dead girls village) ran to the spot. The girl was dead and the villagers took her body to her village and then informed the police and the forest department.

When we reached there we found that there were a few search parties that were spread out all over the area looking for the leopards. The first thing we did was got in touch with the District Forest Officer on the wireless (he was part of one search team) and asked him to call back all the search teams. We reasoned that the leopard would normally come back to the kill spot after all the human disturbance was over. We then asked the Forest officers to get a cage-trap and set it up close to the kill spot. That was easier said than done. The cages were very heavy and the terrain was not helping much. The guards managed to get the cage close to the spot. We got a goat and killed it at the kill spot and then dragged the dead goat to an opening near the cage. We got the girls clothes and put them on top of the dead goat. We then asked a police shooter to sit inside the cage, locked the cage and hoped that the shooter would be able to kill the leopard if it showed up. The leopard had been declared a man eater and there were orders out to kill it “after ensuring that it was the man eater.” After “setting up” the kill we left the area and waited about 2 kilometers away from there. Te shooter was told to wait for about 4-5 hours and if nothing showed up till then, he should send us a message on the wireless. At midnight we heard from the shooter that he wanted to come back. Some guards went and got him out of the cage. We then took the dead goat and put it inside the cage and covered it with the girls clothes and set the trap door up.

When we came back the next day we found a lot of leopard hair just under the trap door, that had fallen shut. The leopard did come back and even tried to enter the cage but the trap had fallen prematurely. After that the leopard had tried to eat as much of the goat as he could through the bars. So close and the trap did not work. The gate must have fallen on the leopard who managed to sneak out from under the trap door.

Rebari - goat herders of Rajasthan - in Pratapgarh

I had to leave the next day (back for Ranthambore) because I run a tourist lodge for a living and it was our most busy season then. End of our leopard hunt– at least mine as I had to get back to making a living. A few days later, Dharmendra called me up and told me that their first leopard – the old limping male was trapped. The forest officials with some input from Dharmendra decided to use a dead goat as a bait instead of a live one. And on the first day they tried it and they trapped the leopard (and took it to the Udaipur zoo). A few days later another leopard was trapped, a few kilometers off, in the neighboring state of Madhya Pradesh. This was the work of the Madhya Pradesh forest department. That was the end of the man eating leopards of Pratapgarh. We still do not know which one was the killer – maybe both of them were.

No Comments | Read full story »