A tiger's plea--on 'Tiger' Day

It is International Tiger Day on September 27...and on this day you dedicate to me..here is my plea..
Before I begin, I do not quite understand: Why this day? A Tiger Day? Undoubtedly, it serves you well—you will hold many of those conferences-where you sit around tables in plush, cooled rooms in cement monstrosities (built after mining my forests, polluting the air, and over the graves of trees—but let’s not dwell on that for now), debating over my fate, and the 'best' course of action to save the tiger over five course meals—while unknownst to you—my brethren lie trapped, paw clasped in a steal jaw, spear thrust into the mouth..to silence his roar.
Somebody forgot to tell the poachers about Tiger Day.
And even you, who sit there sipping champagne and scrolling over Power Point, did you not sign away my forest to make way for a road for your speeding metal death traps? The man in white, who cut the ribbon to a round of applause, if I remember correctly sold the jungle to get votes. And the one who exalted on the virtues and duty of saving the national animal, he, I am told, got a cut for letting a multinational rape my home for uranium.
So my cubs when they grew up, had nowhere to go. No territory that they could mark. I warned my son, as he grew up, showed him his boundaries, pointing to the rolling fields, where Man played with his children, and manufactured his food. “Don’t venture there, child, not into human territory—it is No Tiger’s Land.” He didn’t listen. Not his fault, he is—no was—a good lad, if a bit naughty. The resident male—his father actually, whacked him, and drove him away—and the village he went into, I remember my mom telling me stories about it. It was ours, once..till Man took over. He is dead now, that child of my heart—yes, don’t be surprised. We have emotions too. We bring up our young for two years-feed them milk, kill for them, acquaint them the lay of the land, teach them to hunt, imbibe in them the skills needed for survival...where we fail is to tutor them in the ways of man.
But I digress, as I was saying, he was poisoned. My poor child, he killed a buffalo. How was he to know? There was no deer, and hunger drove him to man’s lair. He smelt food, he killed it. For food, for survival, not for 'love' or land or for not being allowed to watch TV. He paid for it. He came back to his meal after a small stroll, had his fill..and then died a slow, agonising death..
I will not bore you with details of my family’s woes—suffice to point out that my daughter’s son (yes, I am grandmother now, though few of my kin have survived) lost his life in a train accident. I chanced upon a newspaper that some men working on the path left and I saw him, stretched on the tracks--bloated, bloodied, mutilated. But i knew him by his tail, he had a strange one, almost totally black.
And so Dear All-Powerful Man (yes, you are, even though they call ME the King or the Queen of the jungle), please leave my home alone. You have taken most of it away. I know of times when forests were spread far and wide in India, in just 100 years, 95 per cent of it is gone. Now, all I am left with is a tiny part of your (our?) country.
If you want me to live, leave it for me. And you, please stay away.
Of course, that would solve all our problems—a land without nasty two-legged creatures. But even I know, life is not all black and white. I know that if we were unprotected, we would be killed overnight. Each one of us. For we carry a huge price on our heads. You sell our skin and bones and whiskers and penis. I know that at my own cost. I have lost four of my children. In one place (not so far way), ‘Tiger Reserve’ they called it, for it was our sanctuary—all my kin are gone..slaughtered to be sold. There are no tigers there, anymore.
So, we need you to protect us, that is my second plea on this ‘Tiger Day.’
It is almost like asking the devil himself. And it is shameful, seeking your protection: To save us, the most powerful predators on earth. But even we with our stealth and skill and power, cannot match your weapons and evil intent.
We live under the shadow of the gun, our trails are laid with death traps. And while you make all the right noises about saving the tiger (it gets good money and good press, I am told)—why is it that you guard artificial borders with a sophisticated army and weapons, but for us you make not a tenth of the effort?
You do not empower our protectors--few that there are.
Why, I have seen one of our protectors, poor man, shot by the bad men--poachers. He was a bit like us-courageous, and fought with them. He died.
My plea is: if you are to save us, help him, help us.
I have a final prayer: Do not take away our dignity. We are tigers, as much creations of God, as you. We are meant to live in the jungle, free and wild. Not in zoos, in cages so that you can spend a fine Sunday, poking at us, so that we roar and squirm. It amuses you, apparently. But it makes us very sad.
We would prefer death.
Sometimes, as I told you before, we enter your domain. But it is not your domain, it was ours—till you stole it, and pronounced us encroachers. Our jungles keep shrinking, we don’t have food to eat (you like deer meat too, even though God in his wisdom has given you so much more variety) ..so we venture into your land. We hate it. Your territory stinks, it is dirty, filthy, noisy—not like our beautiful, peaceful forest. And it holds many terrors. We know we put our lives at stake in your territory. Its hunger that drives us. And if we get caught, trust me, it is our worst nightmare.
You turn to us with a vengeance. Surround us, beat us, set us afire. A tigress I know of was strangled, hung on a tree and then beaten and whipped, till life gave up on her.
We are browbeaten and squeezed into a cage. Then, the circus begins—hundreds of Homo sapiens pour in from everywhere, everyone tries to get close (we are barred, so they feel heroic) to witness the agony of the caged beast. Big men flash lights at us—its called photography, even bigger men pose with us.
Party over, and we are packed off to the zoo. When they took my neighbour, her children starved to death.
You know, if you just let us be, we will slink away, run. We are terrified of you.
And did you ever stop to think, when you come to our jungles—and thousands of you come in everyday-we see you, so often, all the time, but we go away quietly, quickly, most of the times not even showing ourselves.
We fear for ourselves, and we don’t want to scare you.
We leave you alone.
Can you not accord us the same dignity?

Elephants must forget-Action

I am glad to tell you guys that there has been some action on the Gola corridor story. Here goes:

The member secretary , National Tiger Conservation Authority visited personally to assess the situation.
The Ministry of Environment and Forests had a meeting on September 16, with concerned officials, scientists, researchers. A committee has been formed--which will visit Gola next week. The DG (Forests &wildlife ) has promised that he will take up the issue with ITBP immediately. also, a joint meeting with the forest department, WII, NGOs, ITBP, IOC, Railways will be held in Haldwani.
WWF-India is also holiding a meeting on September 18th.

this is a very difficult one..and one wishes that action had happenned earlier..we could have saved the day. Yet, we must try now--for that corridor is crucial for tigers and elephants.

ELEPHANTS MUST FORGET

There is one editing error:Its ITBP, which has been published as ITBT..

Some other pertinent points are:
a) The Haldwani-Bairelly road which also bisects the corridor has seen two tigers in about 18 months.

b) the Nandour valley is where Jim corbett killed four man eaters-and has the potential to harbour more than 30 tigers

c) the construction work/preparations for the factory/IOC has been going on for the past two years. How come this issue was not raised by NGOs working in the TERAI Arc landscape in the region, or concerned forest officials.

Elephants Must Forget
The steady erosion of the Gola river forest corridor threatens the very survival of tigers and elephants in the Terai region.

AS TRADITION demands, the foundation stone of the railway sleeper factory was laid in January 2007 by invoking Ganesha. At the auspicious hour, hymns were chanted, chandan smeared, ghee poured and flowers showered over the benign elephant god. Ironic, and certainly inauspicious for the elephant. For the factory stands right in the middle of the critical Gola river elephant corridor (GRC). An elephant corridor is a long-term natural migratory route that elephants use to travel between two forests. The GRC links 7,000 sq km of contiguous wildlife habitat in Uttarakhand, which has over 180 tigers and 1,000 elephants, concentrated in the Corbett Tiger Reserve and the Rajaji National Park. This is the most significant part of the approximately 20,000 sq km Terai Arc Landscape (TAL), identified by the All India Tiger Estimate as one of three “viable habitats for the tiger’s long-term survival”.
But is there a future now? It’s questionable. The blocking of the GRC marks the end of a grand dream, of conserving the unique eco-diversity of the Terai — a green ribbon stretching from the Kalesar Sanctuary in Haryana to the Parsa Wildlife Reserve in Nepal, within which lie a string of protected areas linked by forest corridors. “Bottlenecks like Gola fragment the habitat — rendering the free movement of wildlife impossible. In the long run, this will lead to the extinction of wide-ranging species like tigers and elephants,” says Dr AJT Johnsingh, former dean of Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India and scientific advisor to WWF (India). The Gola river corridor, which ensured animal movement from Corbett all the way to the Nepal border adjoining Tanakpur, was one among 10 corridors identified as crucial to conservation efforts, by the Wildlife Institute of India in 2004 and again by the state forest department in 2005. It was already fractured – disrupted by boulder mining along the Gola river, the fast-developing town of Lalkuan and the heavily trafficked Haldwani-Bareilly road. Still, a green sliver, no more than a kilometre or two wide, remained to offer passage to endangered wild creatures.
As part of the Shivalik Elephant Reserve, the corridor is a key area for elephas maximus, the Indian elephant. In contrast to most areas where poachers have decimated tuskers, it has one tusker for three to four females. Equally significant, as part of the Rajaji-Corbett Tiger Conservation Unit, it has been identified as one of the Level-1 areas for the long-term persistence of tigers.
Choked forest corridors and fragmented habitats have put elephant and man on a collision course
However, an onslaught of destruction has all but obliterated the passage. The sleeper factory was only the beginning. The real killer is likely to be the Indian Oil depot next to it, with a massive 15- feet wall encircling a bustling storage complex — an impermeable physical barrier for animals. The IOC avers that they have leased the land from the railways and have all the required clearances. And in 2008, the forest department gave away the last 34 acres of reserve forest to the Indian Tibetan Border Police (ITBT). The net result of all this is that the corridor has ceased to exist. It’s hard to even imagine that tigers and elephants once walked this path. Employees from the paper mill spill onto the narrow, busy streets of Lalkuan; the sleeper factory works 24x7 to fill its quota of 60,000 sleepers a month and tankers line the gate at IOC. The ITBT complex looks deceptively innocent since it is currently housed in tents, but I am assured that walls, wires and concrete structures will soon replace these. The Bareilly road is to be made into a four-lane highway. Adding insult to injury, the forest department is now undertaking an “afforestation drive” in the ITBT camp. The tigers and elephants of Corbett simply have no place to go.
Though the state Forest Conservation Act affirms that a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the Chief Wildlife Warden is imperative in matters of clearance or land transfer concerning the Shivalik Elephant Reserve, the Chief Wildlife Warden, SK Chandola, maintains that “since it wasn’t a protected area, [his] words do not carry weight”. Also, while the state of Uttarakhand has endorsed the documentation of elephant corridors (including the GRC) by the Wildlife Trust of India, Vivek Pandey, the current District Forest Officer (Terai East), denies knowledge of the corridor’s importance. “Critical areas are occasionally signed away in ignorance as officers are not kept informed,” says Pandey, who says the NOC for land transfer to the ITBT was issued by his predecessors.
The real killer is likely to be the Indian Oil depot, an impermeable physical barrier for animals
But the corridor is gone, and with it, we have lost a golden opportunity to connect the Corbett region (4,000 sq km) with the Nandour Valley (1,800 sq km) and the chance to manage the tigerelephant habitat in Uttaranchal (7,000 sq km) as a single landscape. The consequences, in the long run, will be fatal. Tigers need to disperse from the forests they are born in, if they are to breed successfully and be genetically robust. Despite all our hue and cry over ‘saving’ tigers, we have failed to grasp the basic principle of conserving them: creating inviolate spaces and maintaining connectivity between these spaces.
SADLY, THE GRC is not the only casualty in the mad flurry of unplanned, ill-considered development. Most corridors identified in the Terai are being choked with impunity, and fragmented habitats have put man and elephant on a collision course. Along the Gola, a small population of pachyderms, locked into an isolated forest patch in Kishanpur range, are creating havoc in the nearby fields. The conflict has lethal consequences elsewhere in the state, too. In the nine years since the formation of Uttarakhand, over 150 elephants have died, nearly half of them in accidents on heavily trafficked roads. They are also poisoned and electrocuted to avenge damage caused to human property and life. The toll is heavy on both sides. Forty people have lost their lives to elephants between 2000-2007. Tigers straying into human habitation are also being poisoned, as in a recent case near Corbett. The tragedy will only escalate as we continue to erode corridors and island habitats.
It will require monumental effort and political will to give the Gola river corridor back to the forest. But if we fail, we will have signed away the future of the tigers and elephants we say we cherish.