I have been following with increasing concern the Minister of Environment and Forests(MoEF), Jairam Ramesh’s China gaffe, its near-fatal consequences and the myriad range of editorial comment it generated. There have been serious aspersions on him being a dragon lover and lobbying for China (disagree) to having grossly overstepped the line (agree). Rajdeep Sardesai rightly argues that the irrepressible minister's indiscretion pales in significance when compared to “monumental corruption in the political class” where Thiru A Raja gets away with a murky scam of no less than Rs 60,000 crores a fact also stressed by Shobha Narayan in Mint. Narayan makes a case for “men who speak their mind” (agree), while the ebullient Shobhaa De wants him around for the sex-appeal quotient he adds to the parliament (no comment!).
The gravity of Jairam’s gaffe has been debated enough.
I would put things in a different perspective. There is little doubting that the minister seriously spoke out of turn, but is that the real issue, or is there is a bigger game at play? I have been watching the clamour against the minister grow louder as his ministry withheld environment clearances for projects which would have had grave ecological impacts. He stood firm that development projects had to face green scrutiny, a comprehensive Environment Impact Assessment as required by law—and if they did not come up trumps, they had to face the consequences. Jairam stressed repeatedly that economic growth is an imperative but must be in tandem with, not at the cost of, ecological security. Incidentally, that's his job as the Minister for Environment and Forests. One wonders if the Minister of Industry would be crucified for promoting industries, or the mines minister taken to task for increasing production of minerals.
The battle is over clearances, with many ministries—road, power, coal, mines, water resources etc upset at their projects facing the green hurdle. Much has been made in the press about this, some media going to the extent of calling this ‘green terror’, leading one to conclude, naturally, that most projects are being held ransom to the whims of the MoEF. On the contrary. Currently, over 85 per cent of projects sail through environment ‘hurdles’, and over 95 per cent get forest clearances. As a writer focusing on conservation, my question is: Why such a high proportion of clearances?
Of course the MoEF in the past year has given a resounding refusal to some projects—one being the National Highway 7 which caused much ire. The expansion of this highway will cut through the crucial Kanha-Pench tiger corridor. Scientists warn that if fragmented, the future of the tiger in this landscape—one among four most vital tiger habitats in the country—is doomed. The expansion of the NH 37 has been refused because it circumvents Kaziranga National Park, which hosts the only viable population of the greater one-horned rhinoceros and has the highest tiger density in the world. The ministry also said no to powerful groups like Adani for a mine bordering Tadoba. In this, the MoEF was only following its mandate of saving the national animal-to which the Prime Minister has asserted his commitment, besides having the support across political parties and being an issue of increasing public concern. At the same time, the MoEF gave the go ahead for 35 roads, most in Arunachal, cutting through extremely rich ecosystems-the eastern Himalayas, identified as one of the top 25 biodiversity hotspots of the world.
Some projects—i.e mining in Goa or even the contentious Athirapally dam in Kerala have been stalled due to fraudulent environment assessment reports and more importantly in the face of severe opposition from local people who feared the impacts on their health and livelihood. The ministry has trod on many a political toe and upset big businesses—a recent example being the (failed) attempt to stall construction on the Maheshwar dam because of unsatisfactory rehabilitation of the oustees. Out of 22 submergence villages relief and rehabilitation has taken place in only one causing a political uproar—it’s a BJP state—and some sections of the press to label him a ‘green terrorist’.
So how green is the minister? Gaurav Sharma in d-sector.org says not really. In the first six months of Ramesh's tenure (May 22-December 31) 13,642.99 hectares of forest land was cleared. Considerably less than his predecessor who cleared 597.52 hectares between January and May 2009. Interestingly, the lion’s share of the forest, 2202.382 hectares has gone to the road ministry which protests the loudest.
The point is, Jairam Ramesh is not a ‘green messiah’. He has simply brought some rationality, transparency and clear thinking into a corrupt, dysfunctional ministry. It will do well to remember that the task of the ministry is to protect the environment, not be a rubber stamp for clearances endangering the livelihood and health Indian citizens. India has the very difficult task of achieving economic growth without irretrievably damaging natural resources on which depends our existence--water, clean air, soil fertility. It’s a task that concerns us all, and demands our collective support.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Editorial for TigerLink, May 2010
There are many ways to skin a cat.
There’s the obvious one—the gun and the trap. A fairly
common method, witnessed repeatedly, but the image that
flashes in the mind is of Arunachal. The cat—the tiger—
shot, tied to the stake, skinned ,eaten, sold.
The other way is lacing the food with poison, like in
Ranthambhore, where two young unsuspecting tigers did
not survive their supper—goats from a village inside their
‘sanctuary’.
The last is slow poison, pulling the rug under the tiger’s
feet, or simply slashing and cutting it at will, so the ‘forest
rug’ is rendered useless. It’s an insidious method usually
orchestrated in the corridors of power. The execution—the
destruction of the tiger’s home may be intentional spurred
by the lure of money, or it may simply be ignorance, or
indifference.
All across its range countries, tigers face these threats. As
does India, home to, and responsible for, the maximum number
of tigers. All threats are a worry: Poaching, conflict, habitat
degradation and devastation, and all are interlinked, feeding
off, and fueling each other. Habitat degradation will lead to
more conflict, which will instigate poaching.
At the risk of being politically incorrect, and given all our
failures, I would say we are better than most tiger range
countries. The legal framework for conservation is strictly
protectionist, even if execution poor. We have not allowed
for tiger farming unlike a Thailand or China, or come out with
inane policies which advocate keeping tigers as pets in
backyards to save them like Indonesia (details inside). We
fight like a tiger for our tigers in international fora, and have
dug our heels and not allowed the World Bank with its
destructive footprint on tiger habitat to seduce us to partner
them in their ‘save tiger’ initiative.
Yet, we have allowed for a Sariska and a Panna to happen.
We continue to sign away tiger habitats for highways, power
projects, mines. The battle for forest clearances hit the
headlines this season. It was not unlike war: Ministry of
Roads vs Ministry of Environment & Forest, Ministry of
Coal vs Ministry of Environment & forest, Power vs
Environment & Forest... and so on. In an earlier interview
Jairam told me "At times I feel I am fighting a lonely battle.
Ecological security should be the overriding concern of
everyone not just my ministry, but unfortunately, it’s not.
The odds are tremendous against anyone trying to do
anything right and rational when it comes to the environment
and forests."
The bitter debate was not for some obscure forest, but
objections are being raised to a firm refusal to allow a highway
expansion on a critical tiger corridor (Kanha-Pench), or a
mine that ate into Tadoba, a crucial source population of
tigers.
Why are we still fighting for every inch of the tiger’s habitat?
In April this year, the Prime Minister of India wrote to
Chief Ministers of three key tiger states, Madhya Pradesh,
Uttarakhand and Maharashtra urging them to protect tigers,
regulate commercial and tourism interests impinging on tiger
habitat and to notify buffers. Yet on the other hand his
government is on this relentless path of growth, which has
little room for green or tiger concerns. There is simply no
sync between the different arms of the government—while
one vows to save the tiger, the other uses fair means or foul
to open up vital wild habitats for mines, highways, hydroprojects
etc.
At a press conference, the Minister for Environment and
Forest Jairam Ramesh said that currently more than 95 per
cent of projects get environment clearances and 85 per cent
sail through forest clearance. Then, what is all the fuss
about? I was intrigued to note that Gaurav Sharma writes in
d-sector.org that in the first six months of the current
minister’s tenure (May 22-December 31) 13,642.99 hectares
of forest were cleared—the maximum share going to roads
ministry, which protests the loudest. In comparison, between
January and June 2009 clearances amounted to about 7,500
hectares. I wonder what that tells us.
To his credit, even in the face of such massive opposition,
Jairam maintained that his job was to reduce the rejection
rate and be more stringent to protect critical wildlife and
tiger habitats.
We hope. For the sake of the tiger…
Another raging debate of the moment: Is tourism killing
tigers? As author of the story and report on impact of tourism
in Corbett that triggered the debate, I would like to point out
that a mad mushrooming of resorts is destroying vital tiger
corridors not just in Corbett but also in Mudumalai, Kanha,
Kaziranga, Bandhavgarh. Tourism infrastructure has taken
up crucial meadows inside core areas ie Kanha, Corbett.
Another issue: It has been scientifically established that tigers
need inviolate habitats to survive. To facilitate this, there is
a major effort to rehabilitate villagers living inside core critical
tiger habitats. It isn't an easy task, made all the more difficult
when locals perceive that they are being moved out, but the
'rich' aka tourists move in. As for tourism saving tigers, in an
ideal world yes, it can play a tremendous role in garnering
support for the tiger, but in its current form it is intrusive and
counter-productive, and must be regulated. Tourism has to
have a broader base, not madly centred on the tiger. Is
converging of 30-40 noisy cars & their hysterical occupants
on a tiger indicate respect for the animal? Where is the
wilderness tourists have come to seek or have I missed the
point here? Is paying Rs 10,000 & above for a ‘guaranteed’
tiger sighting a way to show your love for the tiger?
Yes, tourists do keep a vigilant third eye, but that has a
limited, if important role. There must be a balance somewhere.
The huge influx of tourists in Sariska could not save the
tiger...and yes, surprise, surprise, tigers have survived--
against the worst odds—in Similipal’s core where no tourist
will venture, or non-tourism areas of Corbett.
It hurts me to say this, but sadly, for most (there are
always exceptions-thank God) the tiger has become a cash
cow. Are we milking it dry?
Think about it.
There’s the obvious one—the gun and the trap. A fairly
common method, witnessed repeatedly, but the image that
flashes in the mind is of Arunachal. The cat—the tiger—
shot, tied to the stake, skinned ,eaten, sold.
The other way is lacing the food with poison, like in
Ranthambhore, where two young unsuspecting tigers did
not survive their supper—goats from a village inside their
‘sanctuary’.
The last is slow poison, pulling the rug under the tiger’s
feet, or simply slashing and cutting it at will, so the ‘forest
rug’ is rendered useless. It’s an insidious method usually
orchestrated in the corridors of power. The execution—the
destruction of the tiger’s home may be intentional spurred
by the lure of money, or it may simply be ignorance, or
indifference.
All across its range countries, tigers face these threats. As
does India, home to, and responsible for, the maximum number
of tigers. All threats are a worry: Poaching, conflict, habitat
degradation and devastation, and all are interlinked, feeding
off, and fueling each other. Habitat degradation will lead to
more conflict, which will instigate poaching.
At the risk of being politically incorrect, and given all our
failures, I would say we are better than most tiger range
countries. The legal framework for conservation is strictly
protectionist, even if execution poor. We have not allowed
for tiger farming unlike a Thailand or China, or come out with
inane policies which advocate keeping tigers as pets in
backyards to save them like Indonesia (details inside). We
fight like a tiger for our tigers in international fora, and have
dug our heels and not allowed the World Bank with its
destructive footprint on tiger habitat to seduce us to partner
them in their ‘save tiger’ initiative.
Yet, we have allowed for a Sariska and a Panna to happen.
We continue to sign away tiger habitats for highways, power
projects, mines. The battle for forest clearances hit the
headlines this season. It was not unlike war: Ministry of
Roads vs Ministry of Environment & Forest, Ministry of
Coal vs Ministry of Environment & forest, Power vs
Environment & Forest... and so on. In an earlier interview
Jairam told me "At times I feel I am fighting a lonely battle.
Ecological security should be the overriding concern of
everyone not just my ministry, but unfortunately, it’s not.
The odds are tremendous against anyone trying to do
anything right and rational when it comes to the environment
and forests."
The bitter debate was not for some obscure forest, but
objections are being raised to a firm refusal to allow a highway
expansion on a critical tiger corridor (Kanha-Pench), or a
mine that ate into Tadoba, a crucial source population of
tigers.
Why are we still fighting for every inch of the tiger’s habitat?
In April this year, the Prime Minister of India wrote to
Chief Ministers of three key tiger states, Madhya Pradesh,
Uttarakhand and Maharashtra urging them to protect tigers,
regulate commercial and tourism interests impinging on tiger
habitat and to notify buffers. Yet on the other hand his
government is on this relentless path of growth, which has
little room for green or tiger concerns. There is simply no
sync between the different arms of the government—while
one vows to save the tiger, the other uses fair means or foul
to open up vital wild habitats for mines, highways, hydroprojects
etc.
At a press conference, the Minister for Environment and
Forest Jairam Ramesh said that currently more than 95 per
cent of projects get environment clearances and 85 per cent
sail through forest clearance. Then, what is all the fuss
about? I was intrigued to note that Gaurav Sharma writes in
d-sector.org that in the first six months of the current
minister’s tenure (May 22-December 31) 13,642.99 hectares
of forest were cleared—the maximum share going to roads
ministry, which protests the loudest. In comparison, between
January and June 2009 clearances amounted to about 7,500
hectares. I wonder what that tells us.
To his credit, even in the face of such massive opposition,
Jairam maintained that his job was to reduce the rejection
rate and be more stringent to protect critical wildlife and
tiger habitats.
We hope. For the sake of the tiger…
Another raging debate of the moment: Is tourism killing
tigers? As author of the story and report on impact of tourism
in Corbett that triggered the debate, I would like to point out
that a mad mushrooming of resorts is destroying vital tiger
corridors not just in Corbett but also in Mudumalai, Kanha,
Kaziranga, Bandhavgarh. Tourism infrastructure has taken
up crucial meadows inside core areas ie Kanha, Corbett.
Another issue: It has been scientifically established that tigers
need inviolate habitats to survive. To facilitate this, there is
a major effort to rehabilitate villagers living inside core critical
tiger habitats. It isn't an easy task, made all the more difficult
when locals perceive that they are being moved out, but the
'rich' aka tourists move in. As for tourism saving tigers, in an
ideal world yes, it can play a tremendous role in garnering
support for the tiger, but in its current form it is intrusive and
counter-productive, and must be regulated. Tourism has to
have a broader base, not madly centred on the tiger. Is
converging of 30-40 noisy cars & their hysterical occupants
on a tiger indicate respect for the animal? Where is the
wilderness tourists have come to seek or have I missed the
point here? Is paying Rs 10,000 & above for a ‘guaranteed’
tiger sighting a way to show your love for the tiger?
Yes, tourists do keep a vigilant third eye, but that has a
limited, if important role. There must be a balance somewhere.
The huge influx of tourists in Sariska could not save the
tiger...and yes, surprise, surprise, tigers have survived--
against the worst odds—in Similipal’s core where no tourist
will venture, or non-tourism areas of Corbett.
It hurts me to say this, but sadly, for most (there are
always exceptions-thank God) the tiger has become a cash
cow. Are we milking it dry?
Think about it.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
My latest tiger story...
M| INVESTIGATES
Dr George Schaller comment on the story!
Many thanks for the tiger article. It is really superb and should be distributed widely in whatever form possible. Congratulations.
What ails our ‘star’ tiger reserves?
Are our politicians serious about saving our big cats?
What needs to be done, and what can you do?
The answers you need, by Prerna Singh Bindra
You couldn’t have missed it on TV – the lost, bewildered look on
Stripey the cub’s fuzzy face as he waits for his mother to return to
their forest home. “Maybe she won’t”, the advertisement warns.
She didn’t.
At least, that’s the way it happened in the real world, last
September, when two tiger cubs were found cowering in a
field bordering the Tadoba Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra. There
was nothing ‘cute’ about them when they were discovered:
Bulging, listless eyes staring out of gaunt, emaciated bodies...
They looked like death.
But they live, if you can call it that, in a cage in Nagpur zoo. Their
mother? Officials believe she was the 40 kilograms of bone and
skin recovered from Nagpur railway station in November. She was
the fifth tigress to have gone ‘missing’ from the region in a twelve
month span; each left behind orphaned cubs, who either died or
are living in captivity. An entire generation of Tadoba’s tigers lost
to the wild.
* * *
Northwards, in Rajasthan’s Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve, two
sub-adult tigers recently lost the battle for survival. Looking to carve
out their own territory, as young adults do, they had moved to the
Keladevi area of the reserve. (Only a third of Ranthambhore – the
national park area of about 260 sq km – is effective tiger habitat;
the rest, including Keladevi, is ‘highly disturbed’, containing no less
than 300 villages.) Natural prey is scarce in the area, so they killed
two goats. It was to be their last supper – the goat carcasses were
poisoned by villagers in retaliation; the tigers’ bodies were found
on March 7.
* * *
Most nights, in a remote corner of the tiger’s northwesterly limit in
India, you can hear the ‘Dholkhand’ tigress calling for a mate. Her
chances of finding one are bleak – there are no other tigers here, on
the western side of Rajaji National Park, which had eight recorded
tigers between 2000 and 2003.
There are tigers on the eastern side, including two males in their
prime who would do very nicely for our lonely tigress. Except the
eastern and western sectors of Rajaji are bisected by a railway line,
a canal, a highway, ashrams, and villages, rendering it virtually
impossible for tigers, and other wildlife, to move freely between the
two sides. In western Rajaji this has dire connotations: When the
Dholkhand tigress dies, it will be the end of Panthera tigris in this
part of the world.
* * *
Kanha in Madhya Pradesh is another example. On holiday in the
park in December 2008, I saw deer, a leopard, wild dogs, pugmarks,
tiger cubs. But heartbreak awaited on my way back from the last
safari. There was commotion at the gate; a cheetal skin had been
seized. I remember stroking the soft spotted pelt, running my
fingers over the bullet hole. Somehow it seemed a bad omen.
News coming in from the park was rarely good after that.
Protection hit rock bottom last year; the tiger mortality rate
increased significantly and in one range, Mukki, tigers seemed to
have vanished altogether – there were no sightings, virtually no
signs. The director at the time was even alleged to have killed a cub
in a hit-and-run accident while ‘under the influence’, though this
was vehemently denied.
I visited the park again last month and found that matters have,
mercifully, improved under new leadership. Increased vigilance
has resulted in a slew of seizures – two leopard skins in December,
a gang of hunters arrested with sambar meat in February. Yet by
no stretch of the imagination is Kanha safe. No less than four tigers
with leg injuries, possibly from failed leg traps, were seen between
November 2009 and January 2010. The presence of ‘suspicious
persons’ has also been reported in the park: Wildlife trade experts
believe that Kanha is just too close for comfort to Katni, the base
for the Baheliyas, a notorious hunting tribe; with the highest tiger
numbers in Madhya Pradesh, it makes for a very tempting target.
“One of the reasons why tiger losses in places like Kanha or Corbett
might not be so apparent is that they are among the larger
tiger reserves, where fortunately the ‘recruitment rate’ is still
good – there are presently a number of tigresses with cubs in
both these parks ”, says Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection
Society of India. The worry is that these critical source or breeding
populations within the core zones of our ‘best’ tiger reserves
are under threat, yet no effective monitoring or protection
mechanisms have been put in place. If poachers feel they can
target these areas with impunity, the tiger is doomed.
What Price Commitment?
If the situation on the ground is this bleak, a large proportion of
the blame must rest with state governments, which have not
prioritised conservation. The central government has set strict
guidelines regarding tiger protection, but the most it can really do
is act as a funding agency or a mentor – it is the states themselves
that must act. And they— well, most are simply not interested.
“Most states have failed to notify buffer areas of tiger reserves, a
legal imperative and crucial for the future of the species, since
they serve as a filter between human habitation and tigers,” says
Dr Rajesh Gopal, Member Secretary, National Tiger Conservation
Authority. Also, tigers are territorial animals commanding large
home ranges, and buffers serve as transient homes for young
tigers on the lookout for their own territories. As of now, 28 of our
39 tiger reserves do not have notified buffer areas. And delays in
notification are not, Jairam Ramesh says bluntly, “due to laziness
on the part of the state governments, nor are they accidental.
They are deliberate – to allow easier approval of projects with
grave environmental consequences, which threaten biodiversity
in these areas.”
Bittu Sahgal, editor, Sanctuary Asia, agrees: “The forest rug
is literally being pulled from under the tiger’s paws by state
governments, most of which indulge in tokenism. More than half
of all tiger habitats that enjoyed good health on the day Project
Tiger was launched in 1973 have vanished. Mines, dams, roads,
power projects and nuclear reactors are all planned inside or
within impact range of tiger habitats.”
Scientists say that a population of 20 breeding tigresses (and
about 75 adult tigers) in a secure habitat of approximately 800
sq km is essential to ensure a safe future for tigers in a reserve
forest – any fewer and the scales tilt towards rapid extinction.
That’s science fiction, given the ground realities: Barely two or three
of our 39 reserves can support such numbers. Nature’s answer
lies in tiger corridors – green ribbons that connect tiger habitats,
so that genetic vigour is maintained and source populations can feed other forests. Yet this vital connectivity is being threatened
by a slew of ill-planned development projects – for example, the
Human Dam project in Vidarbha, which got a green signal from
the Supreme Court in November 2008. The project will submerge
Tadoba’s connectivity with the crucial central Indian landscape,
which includes the Nagzira and Pench national parks; camera
traps have proved this corridor to be a well-worn tiger trail.
Such habitat fragmentation can have significant implications.
Already, the combination of a poor prey base and tiger corridors
devastated by mining have accelerated the human-tiger conflict in
Tadoba, with around 50 people having been killed by tigers in the
past four years. In the Sundarbans, the press of human population
and lack of prey base have locked tiger and man in a battle for
resources. In Corbett and Kaziranga, it is the unchecked growth
of tourism resorts that has blocked tiger routes. Conflict takes its
toll on tigers too – they are killed in retaliation by villagers, and by
poachers who capitalise on the grievances of villagers.
Mercifully, Jairam Ramesh has taken a tough stance on some
obvious disasters, such as the proposed expansion of NH7 that
would cut into the Kanha-Pench tiger corridor. His ministry also
turned down a proposal to allow Adani Mining Private Limited to
mine for coal at Lohara, on the outskirts of Tadoba. But these are
rare victories, as the minister himself points out: “There are no less
than 40 power and coal projects coming up near Tadoba – [just]
one has been refused permission.”
‘Rival’ ministries have also not taken kindly to environmental
hurdles being placed before some of their key projects, and a battle
has erupted within the government. At least three ministers in
the UPA cabinet are gunning for Ramesh: Kamal Nath (Minister
for Surface Transport – and ironically, former Minister for
Environment and Forests) is rooting for highways through national
parks; Praful Patel (Minister, Aviation) allegedly advocated an
Adani Group powerplant in his home constituency, which is near
Nagzira, another important tiger habitat; Union Power Minister
Sushilkumar Shinde is reportedly upset because the clearance for
the Athirapally hydro-electric project was retracted as it would
have drowned acres of prime rainforest. In an interview to M
published earlier this year [M: January 2010, ‘Climate Consciousness
and the Wild Agenda’], Ramesh admitted that he was not
everyone’s favourite man of the moment, adding: “Ecological
security should be an overriding concern for everyone, not just
the Minister of Environment and Forests. It should be as much
the concern of the power ministry, the coal ministry – and that,
unfortunately, is not the case right now.”
“Ecological security should be an overriding concern for everyone...”
The Prime Minister has said as much several times. Why then has
there been no real change on the ground? Why is the special Tiger
Protection Force, announced over a year ago with such fanfare, still
dysfunctional? Why is the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau neither
equipped nor staffed adequately? And crucially, why has Project
Tiger been allocated less funds than it was the year before? Its outlay
in the Union Budget has shrunk to Rs 196 crore in 2010-2011 from
Rs 204 crore in the previous financial year! Compare this with the
Commonwealth Games budget (ironically, the Games mascot is
Sheru the tiger) of Rs 1620 crore, or even the (failed) Ganga Action
Plan which bagged Rs 500 crore!
A reduced budget will mean, among other things, that the crucial
task of relocating villages from within core tiger habitats will
be further delayed. The central government had announced an
enhanced package of Rs 10 lakh per family for people to move
out of ‘sensitive’ areas, to create the inviolate space tigers need to
survive. No less than 702 villages await the move, but where will
the money come from now?
Endgame
Despite all of that, there is hope. India still does a better job of
protecting its tigers than any other home range country. It’s just
that in this case, ‘better’ is not quite good enough. It is in India that
the maximum number of wild tigers live; it is on us, therefore, that
the onus of saving the tiger rests. “The good news is that we finally have a new department for forests and wildlife, which will lead to
more focus and better governance of wildlife related issues. This
has the potential to trigger the change necessary all across India,”
says Valmik Thapar, India’s best known tiger expert. There is some
positive news as well from parks that had been written off – Buxa,
Palamu, Nagarjunasagar and even Indravati, which has been
under siege by Naxals for a decade.
What the tiger requires is simple to articulate – areas free of
human interference, plentiful natural prey – yet immensely
difficult to execute. In India, with its booming population (of both
people and cattle) and current nine percent GDP growth fixation,
ecological concerns are usually the first to be sacrificed at the altar
of development. People, ultimately, believe people must come first.
What needs to be understood, therefore, is that saving the tiger is
not a ‘luxury’, and the loss of a tiger is not just the loss of a tiger. It
is the snapping of yet another strand of the ecosystem on which
we all depend. No less than six hundred rivers and streams flow
out of the tiger’s forests in India. (The ancients understood this
connection, which is why the tiger is revered as the Water God in
many cultures.) Our forest cover also neutralises over 11 percent of
our annual greenhouse gas emissions [see envfor.nic.in/divisions/
ccd/GHG _report.pdf for more details] – it is our insurance against
a warming world. Saving the tiger, therefore, is not about having a
‘pet cause’, it is not even a ‘moral’ imperative; it is an ecological and
an existential imperative.
It is not about us saving the tiger, it is about the tiger saving us.
OTHER BIG CATS ON DEATH ROW
To those who believe that talk of big cats going extinct in India
is just a doomsday prophecy, I have three words: ‘Acinonyx
jubatus venaticus’ – the Asiatic cheetah, extinct in India since
1947, when the last three were shot in Madhya Pradesh. All India’s
big cats – leopards, lions, snow leopards, clouded leopards and, of
course, the tiger – are endangered.
The Asiatic lion is arguably the most endangered big cat in the
country today. There are only about 411 lions, all confined to the Gir
National Park in Gujarat. Despite the 13 percent population growth
(since 2005) recorded in the 2010 census, fears persist that an
outbreak of disease could wipe out the entire population. Panthera
leo persica is especially vulnerable to disease since it descends
from a gene pool of the same two dozen left at the end of the 18th
century. Experts assert that some lions must be translocated to Kuno
National Park, Madhya Pradesh, an alternate habitat that has already
been prepared. Unfortunately, Gujarat refuses to part with ‘its’ lions.
Even the leopard may beat the tiger in the race to extinction. For
every tiger skin recovered, the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau
reckons that some twenty leopard skins are seized. India lost no
less than 115 leopards in the first three months of 2010 – that’s more
than a leopard a day. But it is conflict rather than poaching that will
probably prove to be the leopard’s nemesis. Not a top predator, it
lives on the fringes of the forest, preying on small game like barking
deer, cheetal and langur. With its habitat degraded and natural prey
poached, the leopard has been forced to set up camp near human
habitations, living off dogs, goats and small cattle – and occasionally,
man. This results in retaliatory killings.
Sadly, the leopard has no champions for its cause, no public
campaigns for its survival.
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE
1. States and the central government need to prioritise tiger
conservation. No compromising on tiger habitats and corridors in the
name of development.
2. Relocation of people from critical tiger habitats is a must.
3. Communities located near reserve forests should be made partners in
conservation. Their dependence on forest produce needs to be
reduced. Compensation for cattle kills must be paid promptly.
4. Forest guards require state-of-the-art training and better equipment.
People heading our national parks must be appointed on the basis of
ability and passion.
5. Increased vigilance and protection to prevent poaching of both tigers
and prey. Also, improving conviction rates for wildlife crimes –
currently at less than one percent.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Be informed: Know the issues so you can articulate your position
effectively. Use the RTI Act to find out more about how funds for
conservation projects are being allocated and utilised, or on what
basis development projects in sensitive areas are being cleared. As a
concerned citizen, you can even file a PIL against the many assaults on
tiger habitats.
Speak up , get organised: Be the tiger’s ambassador among your
family, friends, colleagues. Write to editors urging them to highlight the tiger’s plight. Get like-minded people together and form a watchdog
group for a forest near your city. Be a pressure group to push governments,
forest departments etc in the right direction. Write to the MP/MLA from
your constituency; let them know the ‘green vote’ is a factor.
Use your profess ion: If you’re a teacher, help your students imbibe
the lessons of conservation. If you’re a lawyer, lend your time to fight
conservation cases. If you’re a journalist, write on conservation issues.
If you’re a graphic designer, help an NGO design a poster or pamphlet.
The avenues are endless, you need to find how your core skills can be
leveraged.
Donate your time and money:
NGOs who are doing good work on tiger conservation include:
World Wide Fund for Nature (www.wwfindia.org)
Wildlife Protection Society of India (www.wpsi-india.org)
Wildlife Trust of India (www.wildlifetrustofindia.org)
Wildlife First (www.wildlifefirst.info)
Satpuda Foundation (www.ncsaindia.org/satpuda)
Minimise your ecological footprint: Everything that you
use impacts the tiger’s habitat – the water that overflows from your taps,
the paper you use, the electricity you waste (which may be generated
from thermal plants that encroach on tiger habitats). Conserve.
Read :
The Last Tiger by Valmik Thapar
Prerna’s book The King and I: Travels in Tigerland
See: The Truth about Tigers: by Shekar Dattatri (www.shekardattatri.com)
Dr George Schaller comment on the story!
Many thanks for the tiger article. It is really superb and should be distributed widely in whatever form possible. Congratulations.
What ails our ‘star’ tiger reserves?
Are our politicians serious about saving our big cats?
What needs to be done, and what can you do?
The answers you need, by Prerna Singh Bindra
You couldn’t have missed it on TV – the lost, bewildered look on
Stripey the cub’s fuzzy face as he waits for his mother to return to
their forest home. “Maybe she won’t”, the advertisement warns.
She didn’t.
At least, that’s the way it happened in the real world, last
September, when two tiger cubs were found cowering in a
field bordering the Tadoba Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra. There
was nothing ‘cute’ about them when they were discovered:
Bulging, listless eyes staring out of gaunt, emaciated bodies...
They looked like death.
But they live, if you can call it that, in a cage in Nagpur zoo. Their
mother? Officials believe she was the 40 kilograms of bone and
skin recovered from Nagpur railway station in November. She was
the fifth tigress to have gone ‘missing’ from the region in a twelve
month span; each left behind orphaned cubs, who either died or
are living in captivity. An entire generation of Tadoba’s tigers lost
to the wild.
* * *
Northwards, in Rajasthan’s Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve, two
sub-adult tigers recently lost the battle for survival. Looking to carve
out their own territory, as young adults do, they had moved to the
Keladevi area of the reserve. (Only a third of Ranthambhore – the
national park area of about 260 sq km – is effective tiger habitat;
the rest, including Keladevi, is ‘highly disturbed’, containing no less
than 300 villages.) Natural prey is scarce in the area, so they killed
two goats. It was to be their last supper – the goat carcasses were
poisoned by villagers in retaliation; the tigers’ bodies were found
on March 7.
* * *
Most nights, in a remote corner of the tiger’s northwesterly limit in
India, you can hear the ‘Dholkhand’ tigress calling for a mate. Her
chances of finding one are bleak – there are no other tigers here, on
the western side of Rajaji National Park, which had eight recorded
tigers between 2000 and 2003.
There are tigers on the eastern side, including two males in their
prime who would do very nicely for our lonely tigress. Except the
eastern and western sectors of Rajaji are bisected by a railway line,
a canal, a highway, ashrams, and villages, rendering it virtually
impossible for tigers, and other wildlife, to move freely between the
two sides. In western Rajaji this has dire connotations: When the
Dholkhand tigress dies, it will be the end of Panthera tigris in this
part of the world.
* * *
Kanha in Madhya Pradesh is another example. On holiday in the
park in December 2008, I saw deer, a leopard, wild dogs, pugmarks,
tiger cubs. But heartbreak awaited on my way back from the last
safari. There was commotion at the gate; a cheetal skin had been
seized. I remember stroking the soft spotted pelt, running my
fingers over the bullet hole. Somehow it seemed a bad omen.
News coming in from the park was rarely good after that.
Protection hit rock bottom last year; the tiger mortality rate
increased significantly and in one range, Mukki, tigers seemed to
have vanished altogether – there were no sightings, virtually no
signs. The director at the time was even alleged to have killed a cub
in a hit-and-run accident while ‘under the influence’, though this
was vehemently denied.
I visited the park again last month and found that matters have,
mercifully, improved under new leadership. Increased vigilance
has resulted in a slew of seizures – two leopard skins in December,
a gang of hunters arrested with sambar meat in February. Yet by
no stretch of the imagination is Kanha safe. No less than four tigers
with leg injuries, possibly from failed leg traps, were seen between
November 2009 and January 2010. The presence of ‘suspicious
persons’ has also been reported in the park: Wildlife trade experts
believe that Kanha is just too close for comfort to Katni, the base
for the Baheliyas, a notorious hunting tribe; with the highest tiger
numbers in Madhya Pradesh, it makes for a very tempting target.
“One of the reasons why tiger losses in places like Kanha or Corbett
might not be so apparent is that they are among the larger
tiger reserves, where fortunately the ‘recruitment rate’ is still
good – there are presently a number of tigresses with cubs in
both these parks ”, says Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection
Society of India. The worry is that these critical source or breeding
populations within the core zones of our ‘best’ tiger reserves
are under threat, yet no effective monitoring or protection
mechanisms have been put in place. If poachers feel they can
target these areas with impunity, the tiger is doomed.
What Price Commitment?
If the situation on the ground is this bleak, a large proportion of
the blame must rest with state governments, which have not
prioritised conservation. The central government has set strict
guidelines regarding tiger protection, but the most it can really do
is act as a funding agency or a mentor – it is the states themselves
that must act. And they— well, most are simply not interested.
“Most states have failed to notify buffer areas of tiger reserves, a
legal imperative and crucial for the future of the species, since
they serve as a filter between human habitation and tigers,” says
Dr Rajesh Gopal, Member Secretary, National Tiger Conservation
Authority. Also, tigers are territorial animals commanding large
home ranges, and buffers serve as transient homes for young
tigers on the lookout for their own territories. As of now, 28 of our
39 tiger reserves do not have notified buffer areas. And delays in
notification are not, Jairam Ramesh says bluntly, “due to laziness
on the part of the state governments, nor are they accidental.
They are deliberate – to allow easier approval of projects with
grave environmental consequences, which threaten biodiversity
in these areas.”
Bittu Sahgal, editor, Sanctuary Asia, agrees: “The forest rug
is literally being pulled from under the tiger’s paws by state
governments, most of which indulge in tokenism. More than half
of all tiger habitats that enjoyed good health on the day Project
Tiger was launched in 1973 have vanished. Mines, dams, roads,
power projects and nuclear reactors are all planned inside or
within impact range of tiger habitats.”
Scientists say that a population of 20 breeding tigresses (and
about 75 adult tigers) in a secure habitat of approximately 800
sq km is essential to ensure a safe future for tigers in a reserve
forest – any fewer and the scales tilt towards rapid extinction.
That’s science fiction, given the ground realities: Barely two or three
of our 39 reserves can support such numbers. Nature’s answer
lies in tiger corridors – green ribbons that connect tiger habitats,
so that genetic vigour is maintained and source populations can feed other forests. Yet this vital connectivity is being threatened
by a slew of ill-planned development projects – for example, the
Human Dam project in Vidarbha, which got a green signal from
the Supreme Court in November 2008. The project will submerge
Tadoba’s connectivity with the crucial central Indian landscape,
which includes the Nagzira and Pench national parks; camera
traps have proved this corridor to be a well-worn tiger trail.
Such habitat fragmentation can have significant implications.
Already, the combination of a poor prey base and tiger corridors
devastated by mining have accelerated the human-tiger conflict in
Tadoba, with around 50 people having been killed by tigers in the
past four years. In the Sundarbans, the press of human population
and lack of prey base have locked tiger and man in a battle for
resources. In Corbett and Kaziranga, it is the unchecked growth
of tourism resorts that has blocked tiger routes. Conflict takes its
toll on tigers too – they are killed in retaliation by villagers, and by
poachers who capitalise on the grievances of villagers.
Mercifully, Jairam Ramesh has taken a tough stance on some
obvious disasters, such as the proposed expansion of NH7 that
would cut into the Kanha-Pench tiger corridor. His ministry also
turned down a proposal to allow Adani Mining Private Limited to
mine for coal at Lohara, on the outskirts of Tadoba. But these are
rare victories, as the minister himself points out: “There are no less
than 40 power and coal projects coming up near Tadoba – [just]
one has been refused permission.”
‘Rival’ ministries have also not taken kindly to environmental
hurdles being placed before some of their key projects, and a battle
has erupted within the government. At least three ministers in
the UPA cabinet are gunning for Ramesh: Kamal Nath (Minister
for Surface Transport – and ironically, former Minister for
Environment and Forests) is rooting for highways through national
parks; Praful Patel (Minister, Aviation) allegedly advocated an
Adani Group powerplant in his home constituency, which is near
Nagzira, another important tiger habitat; Union Power Minister
Sushilkumar Shinde is reportedly upset because the clearance for
the Athirapally hydro-electric project was retracted as it would
have drowned acres of prime rainforest. In an interview to M
published earlier this year [M: January 2010, ‘Climate Consciousness
and the Wild Agenda’], Ramesh admitted that he was not
everyone’s favourite man of the moment, adding: “Ecological
security should be an overriding concern for everyone, not just
the Minister of Environment and Forests. It should be as much
the concern of the power ministry, the coal ministry – and that,
unfortunately, is not the case right now.”
“Ecological security should be an overriding concern for everyone...”
The Prime Minister has said as much several times. Why then has
there been no real change on the ground? Why is the special Tiger
Protection Force, announced over a year ago with such fanfare, still
dysfunctional? Why is the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau neither
equipped nor staffed adequately? And crucially, why has Project
Tiger been allocated less funds than it was the year before? Its outlay
in the Union Budget has shrunk to Rs 196 crore in 2010-2011 from
Rs 204 crore in the previous financial year! Compare this with the
Commonwealth Games budget (ironically, the Games mascot is
Sheru the tiger) of Rs 1620 crore, or even the (failed) Ganga Action
Plan which bagged Rs 500 crore!
A reduced budget will mean, among other things, that the crucial
task of relocating villages from within core tiger habitats will
be further delayed. The central government had announced an
enhanced package of Rs 10 lakh per family for people to move
out of ‘sensitive’ areas, to create the inviolate space tigers need to
survive. No less than 702 villages await the move, but where will
the money come from now?
Endgame
Despite all of that, there is hope. India still does a better job of
protecting its tigers than any other home range country. It’s just
that in this case, ‘better’ is not quite good enough. It is in India that
the maximum number of wild tigers live; it is on us, therefore, that
the onus of saving the tiger rests. “The good news is that we finally have a new department for forests and wildlife, which will lead to
more focus and better governance of wildlife related issues. This
has the potential to trigger the change necessary all across India,”
says Valmik Thapar, India’s best known tiger expert. There is some
positive news as well from parks that had been written off – Buxa,
Palamu, Nagarjunasagar and even Indravati, which has been
under siege by Naxals for a decade.
What the tiger requires is simple to articulate – areas free of
human interference, plentiful natural prey – yet immensely
difficult to execute. In India, with its booming population (of both
people and cattle) and current nine percent GDP growth fixation,
ecological concerns are usually the first to be sacrificed at the altar
of development. People, ultimately, believe people must come first.
What needs to be understood, therefore, is that saving the tiger is
not a ‘luxury’, and the loss of a tiger is not just the loss of a tiger. It
is the snapping of yet another strand of the ecosystem on which
we all depend. No less than six hundred rivers and streams flow
out of the tiger’s forests in India. (The ancients understood this
connection, which is why the tiger is revered as the Water God in
many cultures.) Our forest cover also neutralises over 11 percent of
our annual greenhouse gas emissions [see envfor.nic.in/divisions/
ccd/GHG _report.pdf for more details] – it is our insurance against
a warming world. Saving the tiger, therefore, is not about having a
‘pet cause’, it is not even a ‘moral’ imperative; it is an ecological and
an existential imperative.
It is not about us saving the tiger, it is about the tiger saving us.
OTHER BIG CATS ON DEATH ROW
To those who believe that talk of big cats going extinct in India
is just a doomsday prophecy, I have three words: ‘Acinonyx
jubatus venaticus’ – the Asiatic cheetah, extinct in India since
1947, when the last three were shot in Madhya Pradesh. All India’s
big cats – leopards, lions, snow leopards, clouded leopards and, of
course, the tiger – are endangered.
The Asiatic lion is arguably the most endangered big cat in the
country today. There are only about 411 lions, all confined to the Gir
National Park in Gujarat. Despite the 13 percent population growth
(since 2005) recorded in the 2010 census, fears persist that an
outbreak of disease could wipe out the entire population. Panthera
leo persica is especially vulnerable to disease since it descends
from a gene pool of the same two dozen left at the end of the 18th
century. Experts assert that some lions must be translocated to Kuno
National Park, Madhya Pradesh, an alternate habitat that has already
been prepared. Unfortunately, Gujarat refuses to part with ‘its’ lions.
Even the leopard may beat the tiger in the race to extinction. For
every tiger skin recovered, the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau
reckons that some twenty leopard skins are seized. India lost no
less than 115 leopards in the first three months of 2010 – that’s more
than a leopard a day. But it is conflict rather than poaching that will
probably prove to be the leopard’s nemesis. Not a top predator, it
lives on the fringes of the forest, preying on small game like barking
deer, cheetal and langur. With its habitat degraded and natural prey
poached, the leopard has been forced to set up camp near human
habitations, living off dogs, goats and small cattle – and occasionally,
man. This results in retaliatory killings.
Sadly, the leopard has no champions for its cause, no public
campaigns for its survival.
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE
1. States and the central government need to prioritise tiger
conservation. No compromising on tiger habitats and corridors in the
name of development.
2. Relocation of people from critical tiger habitats is a must.
3. Communities located near reserve forests should be made partners in
conservation. Their dependence on forest produce needs to be
reduced. Compensation for cattle kills must be paid promptly.
4. Forest guards require state-of-the-art training and better equipment.
People heading our national parks must be appointed on the basis of
ability and passion.
5. Increased vigilance and protection to prevent poaching of both tigers
and prey. Also, improving conviction rates for wildlife crimes –
currently at less than one percent.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Be informed: Know the issues so you can articulate your position
effectively. Use the RTI Act to find out more about how funds for
conservation projects are being allocated and utilised, or on what
basis development projects in sensitive areas are being cleared. As a
concerned citizen, you can even file a PIL against the many assaults on
tiger habitats.
Speak up , get organised: Be the tiger’s ambassador among your
family, friends, colleagues. Write to editors urging them to highlight the tiger’s plight. Get like-minded people together and form a watchdog
group for a forest near your city. Be a pressure group to push governments,
forest departments etc in the right direction. Write to the MP/MLA from
your constituency; let them know the ‘green vote’ is a factor.
Use your profess ion: If you’re a teacher, help your students imbibe
the lessons of conservation. If you’re a lawyer, lend your time to fight
conservation cases. If you’re a journalist, write on conservation issues.
If you’re a graphic designer, help an NGO design a poster or pamphlet.
The avenues are endless, you need to find how your core skills can be
leveraged.
Donate your time and money:
NGOs who are doing good work on tiger conservation include:
World Wide Fund for Nature (www.wwfindia.org)
Wildlife Protection Society of India (www.wpsi-india.org)
Wildlife Trust of India (www.wildlifetrustofindia.org)
Wildlife First (www.wildlifefirst.info)
Satpuda Foundation (www.ncsaindia.org/satpuda)
Minimise your ecological footprint: Everything that you
use impacts the tiger’s habitat – the water that overflows from your taps,
the paper you use, the electricity you waste (which may be generated
from thermal plants that encroach on tiger habitats). Conserve.
Read :
The Last Tiger by Valmik Thapar
Prerna’s book The King and I: Travels in Tigerland
See: The Truth about Tigers: by Shekar Dattatri (www.shekardattatri.com)
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Tiger Tourism ?
This is a quick response to the ire of those who say i am 'anti-tourism' and the 'hate mails' i get as author of the report on 'Impact of tourism on tigers & other wildlife in Corbett', I would like to point out that tourism infrastructure ie.a mad mushrooming of resorts is destroying vital tiger corridors which are critical to their survival, not just in Corbett but also in Mudumalai, Kanha, Kaziranga, Bandhavgarh. Another issue: It has been scientifically established that tigers need inviolate habitats to survive, so there is a major effort to rehabilitate villagers living inside core critical tiger habitats. It isn't an easy task, made all the more difficult when locals perceive that they are being moved out, but the 'rich' aka tourists move in.
As for tourism saving tigers, in an ideal world yes, it can play a tremendous role in garnering support for the tiger, but in its current form it is intrusive and counter-productive, and must be regulated. Tourism has to have a broader base, not madly centred on the tiger. Is converging of 30/40 noisy, hysterical cars & their occupants on a tiger indicate a respect for the tiger? Where is the wilderness you have come to seek, or really, or have i missed the point somewhere? Is paying Rs 10,000 & above for a guaranteed tiger sighting a way to show your love for the tiger?
How many of you have questioned resorts (and yes, i know there are a few good people out there-thanks)..where does the firewood come from? why is the trash dumped in the river? Why such huge generators belching away diesel and noise by the tiger's forest?
Yes, tourists do keep a vigilant third eye, but that has a limited, if important role. And there must be a balance somewhere,
The huge number of tourists could not save the tiger in Sariska...and yes, surprise, surprise, tigers have survived non-tourism areas too. In the non-tourism areas of Corbett, or the core of Simlipal where no tourist will venture.
Not that the forest department is doing its utmost, there are many flaws, which i, and many others, have highlighted again and again.
It hurts me to say this, but sadly, for most (there are always exceptions--and thanks God for them) the tiger has become a cash cow--are we milking it dry?
Think about it..
As for tourism saving tigers, in an ideal world yes, it can play a tremendous role in garnering support for the tiger, but in its current form it is intrusive and counter-productive, and must be regulated. Tourism has to have a broader base, not madly centred on the tiger. Is converging of 30/40 noisy, hysterical cars & their occupants on a tiger indicate a respect for the tiger? Where is the wilderness you have come to seek, or really, or have i missed the point somewhere? Is paying Rs 10,000 & above for a guaranteed tiger sighting a way to show your love for the tiger?
How many of you have questioned resorts (and yes, i know there are a few good people out there-thanks)..where does the firewood come from? why is the trash dumped in the river? Why such huge generators belching away diesel and noise by the tiger's forest?
Yes, tourists do keep a vigilant third eye, but that has a limited, if important role. And there must be a balance somewhere,
The huge number of tourists could not save the tiger in Sariska...and yes, surprise, surprise, tigers have survived non-tourism areas too. In the non-tourism areas of Corbett, or the core of Simlipal where no tourist will venture.
Not that the forest department is doing its utmost, there are many flaws, which i, and many others, have highlighted again and again.
It hurts me to say this, but sadly, for most (there are always exceptions--and thanks God for them) the tiger has become a cash cow--are we milking it dry?
Think about it..
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Death of a Wetland
This is particularly painful..last year with some good rains, i had written on the hope of revival of Bharatpur...
regards,
prerna
Prerna Singh Bindra
A confession…this is not being reported from the field. I have not personally visited Bharatpur National Park, not recently anyway. You could say I have abandoned it in its dire days—I simply do not have the heart to witness the slow death of the wetland, once fecund and so alive with the call and colour of myriad birds. My memories of Bharatpur are affectionate, dappled with bird song. The wetland was alive, wherever you looked, there were waders, geese, darters, ducks, pintails, cormorants, teals, babblers, kingfishers, egrets, storks, eagles, owls, vultures... Here was not the silence of the jungle: Dawn was announced with the trumpet of the sarus cranes and the cackle of the peafowl. That set the tone for the day—parakeets shrieked, geese gaggled…you get the drift. Nights, you could hear the soft hoot of the owl, but only if it managed to rise above the howl of the jackals. Rare fishing cats prowled the waters, jungle cats surprised you by their sudden appearance, you could spot rock pythons curled up, soaking in the sun, nilgai and deer pranced in knee-deep waters.
This was Keoladeo Ghana National Park, a world-renowned waterfowl site, topping over 350 species of birds.
It’s all quiet now, and it is the silence of the dead.
The first sign of unhappy days ahead came in the early winter of 2002, when Keoladeo’s star visitor, the Siberian crane, dwindling over the years, failed to show up. Some took it as an omen, a sign of grim times. True enough, drought plagued the region from 2003 onwards.
Bharatpur shriveled up. Once, the Ghana canal was the park’s lifeline. It supplied water from the Ajan Dam, built on the confluence of the rivers Ghambhir and Banganga in the 18th century. Dams built along both the rivers staunched the flow of water to Ajan’s reservoir. Continual deficient rainfall in the catchment areas made matters worse, and water from the dam was denied to the sanctuary, due to agitating farmers and water politics. Local villagers demanded water for their fields, and the then Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, went far enough to say, in 2005, “people, not parks, were her priority”.
She missed the point completely; not understanding that denying the wetlands would mean groundwater for nearby farmers would not be replenished. The powers-that-be succumbed to political pressure and diverted water meant for the swamps to farmlands, repeatedly, over the years. The result was complete and total devastation. Matters improved marginally in 2008 with good rains, but the situation now is worse than ever before.
The wetland, accorded the status of a Ramsar Site is arid--no water, no grasses, no fish. The monsoon breeding birds and the migrants gave the dry, desolate park a miss. The Siberian cranes are already history. Painted Storks, so emblematic to the park have ceased to breed, the ‘heronries’ are a painful memory. Sarus cranes, who once danced in the hundreds, can now be counted on your fingers. Most don’t breed, for instinct dictates that their young will not survive. A few Common Cranes came by but took wing soon thereafter.
Lacking prey, the raptors have fled too. From the 350-odd species the park once boasted, the numbers have crashed to less than a 100. The park that saw hundred of thousands of birds in a normal season now hosts less than 5,000. Other species have suffered, too. The fishing cat has vanished. Otters are nowhere to be seen, and turtles,perhaps a handful, can be seen desperately thrashing in tiny, putrid pools of water.
The once prolific Bharatpur has become a graveyard.
With the wetland on its deathbed, the villages and town are feeling the pinch. Farmers, in bordering villages, lament the loss of groundwater, their borewells are drying up. And Bharatpur, which thrived on bird tourism, is a bit of a ghost town now, the buzz has died, and people are worried with their main source of income drying up, along with the park.
The only facile attempt to save Bharatpur, are a few tubewells nosily churning out dead, sterile water, which has no nutrients for the birds.
The government has changed in Rajasthan now, but the indifference to the park continues. A project to build a 17-km underground tunnel to divert water to the park from a storm drain of the Yamuna, part of an earlier Govardhan project, has been dormant for over a year now. The centre has actually sanctioned 40 crores of the required 56.2 crores. But the state is simply sitting on the money. Bharatpur is a World Heritage Site, but in all likelihood it will lose this valued status by the next year, unless things improve, or the Rain Gods give us a repreive..if only for this year.
Many wetlands around the country suffer a similar fate. Yet, one hoped that the famous ‘Ghana’ would somehow be spared. Not so.. inspite of its many aficionados, noone is rallying for Bharatpur’s cause.
Bharatpur, it appears, will die unmourned….
In The Sunday Guardian, May 5, 2010
regards,
prerna
Prerna Singh Bindra
A confession…this is not being reported from the field. I have not personally visited Bharatpur National Park, not recently anyway. You could say I have abandoned it in its dire days—I simply do not have the heart to witness the slow death of the wetland, once fecund and so alive with the call and colour of myriad birds. My memories of Bharatpur are affectionate, dappled with bird song. The wetland was alive, wherever you looked, there were waders, geese, darters, ducks, pintails, cormorants, teals, babblers, kingfishers, egrets, storks, eagles, owls, vultures... Here was not the silence of the jungle: Dawn was announced with the trumpet of the sarus cranes and the cackle of the peafowl. That set the tone for the day—parakeets shrieked, geese gaggled…you get the drift. Nights, you could hear the soft hoot of the owl, but only if it managed to rise above the howl of the jackals. Rare fishing cats prowled the waters, jungle cats surprised you by their sudden appearance, you could spot rock pythons curled up, soaking in the sun, nilgai and deer pranced in knee-deep waters.
This was Keoladeo Ghana National Park, a world-renowned waterfowl site, topping over 350 species of birds.
It’s all quiet now, and it is the silence of the dead.
The first sign of unhappy days ahead came in the early winter of 2002, when Keoladeo’s star visitor, the Siberian crane, dwindling over the years, failed to show up. Some took it as an omen, a sign of grim times. True enough, drought plagued the region from 2003 onwards.
Bharatpur shriveled up. Once, the Ghana canal was the park’s lifeline. It supplied water from the Ajan Dam, built on the confluence of the rivers Ghambhir and Banganga in the 18th century. Dams built along both the rivers staunched the flow of water to Ajan’s reservoir. Continual deficient rainfall in the catchment areas made matters worse, and water from the dam was denied to the sanctuary, due to agitating farmers and water politics. Local villagers demanded water for their fields, and the then Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, went far enough to say, in 2005, “people, not parks, were her priority”.
She missed the point completely; not understanding that denying the wetlands would mean groundwater for nearby farmers would not be replenished. The powers-that-be succumbed to political pressure and diverted water meant for the swamps to farmlands, repeatedly, over the years. The result was complete and total devastation. Matters improved marginally in 2008 with good rains, but the situation now is worse than ever before.
The wetland, accorded the status of a Ramsar Site is arid--no water, no grasses, no fish. The monsoon breeding birds and the migrants gave the dry, desolate park a miss. The Siberian cranes are already history. Painted Storks, so emblematic to the park have ceased to breed, the ‘heronries’ are a painful memory. Sarus cranes, who once danced in the hundreds, can now be counted on your fingers. Most don’t breed, for instinct dictates that their young will not survive. A few Common Cranes came by but took wing soon thereafter.
Lacking prey, the raptors have fled too. From the 350-odd species the park once boasted, the numbers have crashed to less than a 100. The park that saw hundred of thousands of birds in a normal season now hosts less than 5,000. Other species have suffered, too. The fishing cat has vanished. Otters are nowhere to be seen, and turtles,perhaps a handful, can be seen desperately thrashing in tiny, putrid pools of water.
The once prolific Bharatpur has become a graveyard.
With the wetland on its deathbed, the villages and town are feeling the pinch. Farmers, in bordering villages, lament the loss of groundwater, their borewells are drying up. And Bharatpur, which thrived on bird tourism, is a bit of a ghost town now, the buzz has died, and people are worried with their main source of income drying up, along with the park.
The only facile attempt to save Bharatpur, are a few tubewells nosily churning out dead, sterile water, which has no nutrients for the birds.
The government has changed in Rajasthan now, but the indifference to the park continues. A project to build a 17-km underground tunnel to divert water to the park from a storm drain of the Yamuna, part of an earlier Govardhan project, has been dormant for over a year now. The centre has actually sanctioned 40 crores of the required 56.2 crores. But the state is simply sitting on the money. Bharatpur is a World Heritage Site, but in all likelihood it will lose this valued status by the next year, unless things improve, or the Rain Gods give us a repreive..if only for this year.
Many wetlands around the country suffer a similar fate. Yet, one hoped that the famous ‘Ghana’ would somehow be spared. Not so.. inspite of its many aficionados, noone is rallying for Bharatpur’s cause.
Bharatpur, it appears, will die unmourned….
In The Sunday Guardian, May 5, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)