Aditya ‘Dicky’ Singh

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 streams. This was done to maximize the recharging of the wells after every rain. All the three kui that existed on these three different locations were in total ruins and the new wells were dug right next to the older ruined kui. We probably could have fixed these older kuis but we did not even give it thought because the cost of doing that would have been much more than the cost of digging newer wells.

The three wells are located in Dev ki kui, Gular ki kui and Pathar or Baba ki kui. They are about three to four kilometers apart from each other. Gular ki kui is about 4 kilometers away from Indala village (one of the four villages that exist inside the Ranthambhore national park). We got lucky with Dev ki kui and Baba ki kui. These wells struck good permanent underground water streams at 21 and 29 feet respectively. The well at Gular ki kui struck water at 40 feet but this water is just about enough to sustain one waterhole.

The total cost of digging 90 feet of well was Rupees 360,000. We have paid the contractor Dhanroop Maali a sum of Rupess 240,000 and the rest I am going to pay him in a day or two. I would like to thank three of my close friends who pitched in with the money. They are Jayanand Govindraj (from Chennai – Rupees 50,000), Neha and Hitesh (from Delhi – Rupees 25,000) and Nitin “Silky” Mistry (from Goa – Rupees 20,000). Cheers guys –this may be the only credit that you will get. No - I am just joking – you will get much more than that. And none of them paid in “dollars” (see the 8th comment in my last post to know what I mean).

Getting the first waterhole going near all the three wells was easy – all the three areas had “natural” rocky waterholes close by that are being filled by the water from the wells. The waterhole at Dev ki kui (see picture below) is pretty amazing. I saw about 20 Sambar der drinking there at one time, late in the evening. The Forest Department staff and the guys working at the wells have been reporting regular tiger sightings. And these were areas where tiger were almost never seen after December or so, when the last waterholes dried out.

There is some work to be done still. Like making a few very basic water recharging structures and a few more waterholes. This is time consuming but relatively inexpensive work.

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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 appears at first. There are too many factors involved. Besides there are more experts than wild tigers, many more. And since research on tigers is actively discouraged all these so called tiger experts (including dodos like me) have no scientific ground to stand on.

Some facts:

• Right now tigers exist only in the most “economically” remote area of India.

• Typically these are places with the people have the lowest socio-economic index, relatively lower population density than rest of India but are areas rich in natural resources.

• Over half these areas (specially in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh etc) have huge political problems (eg naxalites etc).

• The law and order situation is generally speaking very poor in all these areas.

• Tigers exist in such areas because the population around did not kill them. This is a very important and most of us when talking about tiger conservation tend to ignore this.

As Dr. Ulhas Karanth rightly says destruction of habitat and prey is the most severe threat that tigers have been facing for the last century or so. This is what will ultimately get them. Poaching gets to be a threat only when the tiger numbers are so low that they were almost unviable. For instance all of us say that poachers killed 18 tigers in Sariska in one year and as a result all the tigers in Sariska were wiped out. Wrong. There were never more than 4 or 5 tigers in Sariska since the year 2000. By 2004 (the year when poachers wiped out tigers in Sariska) there were probably no ore than 2 or 3 tigers in Sariska.

In reserves like Simlipal killing of prey (for the tiger) species like deer, antelopes, wild pigs etc is widely accepted. Part of the reason for this is that bush meat has always been an important dietary supplement for the local population. Till about 50 to 60 years ago this did not make much of a difference to the forests health because the local population was very low and there was a lot of wildlife around Simlipal. With improvement in medical facilities the local population boomed. Which created more and more strain on the local resources including wildlife. This has now reached a crisis point .

Wild tigers are a huge source of revenue for India. I would estimate that they contribute something over Rs 15,000,000,000 per annum to the Indian economy just through tourism to 12 to 13 of the popular tiger reserves. This the turn over of airlines, transport companies, tour operators, Destination Management Companies, Accommodation providers, local Excursion agents, Shop keepers and various other service providers. This is a huge sum and small parts of it can finance conservation activities in the entire country. Besides this, there is a huge sum that comes through charities, NGOs etc. The problem with this huge sum is that the local villagers who live around the reserves do not get to see most of this money. For them life is barely above (or in most cases - below) subsistence level. Most of them feel that this is the price that they have to pay for not killing the forest around their home and to an extent they are correct.

In the long run tigers will survive only if a large chunk of the people who live around tiger reserves make a living out of the forests around them. Why should they be excluded from this pie?

The debate goes on and on and on. If you find someone who is genuinely interested in tiger conservation, do let me know.

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What’s the toughest question to answer in Ranthambhore? You guessed it right. It is - How many tigers are there in Ranthambhore?

Tigers by their very nature are elusive and are not the easiest animals to find. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to get their exact numbers in any wild area, specially in large and dense forested areas. Ranthambore is neither large nor dense. The Ranthambhore tiger reserve is nearly 1400 square kilometers in area but of these 1400 square kilometers, only a small part (of slightly under 300 square kilometers - the part known as Ranthambore national park) has tigers. The rest of the Ranthambhore tiger reserve is not a good enough habitat for tigers, where the odd tiger may stray in occasionally for a short duration of time. This part has too much of human disturbance (mainly cultivators and cattle herders – the number one enemies of wildlife in India) and not enough prey base.

So how tough is it to estimate the number of tigers in a place like Ranthambhore? I would say that it is not easy but at the same time Ranthambhore (because it is a dry deciduous forest) is the easiest place, amongst all the Indian tiger reserves, in which to conduct a tiger census. A tiger census is always an estimation with some margin of error. If you get together a small group of people who know the terrain of Ranthambhore and are willing to work hard (and none of them have to be tiger experts) to conduct a tiger census in Ranthambhore, the margin of error should be between 5 to 10 percent.

Since the time Project tiger was launched in 1973 the different tiger reserves in India used the

Recently the Project Tiger funded an extensive census of tigers in all the tiger reserves in India and the results were scary – between 1200 and 1500 tigers in all of Indian wilderness. It was carried out by Wildlife Institute of India using lots of camera traps – the only proper way to do a tiger census.

What do they have to say about how many tigers are there in Ranthambhore? 31 including all the cubs. Before I read this data I thought there were 32 including cubs. I could be wrong.

This nationwide census finally put to end the big stupid debate that was going on about tiger numbers in India with people like us claiming no more than 1000 to 200o and the government claiming 3000 to 4000. And it woke the nation up. The Prime Minister is now acting tough and we have a lot of hopes from him. he is a great man who can really act when required.

I am posting some interesting pictures that came out from the camera traps used in this census in Ranthambhore none of which are mine and don’t ask me how I got them. Some people may get sacked if I answered that. These pictures have been taken with Indian tax payers money and since I am one of those I have a right to post them.

Male for sure.

There are a series of pictures of this guy and he is not supposed to be here. After a few pictures he started waving to the camera.

They are not supposed to be there either

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