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I
really hope we are proved wrong when we say there are no tigers left in the
Sariska Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan. But if it is so, what is now increasingly
accepted as a sad fact should actually make us extremely angry. We must know:
who was responsible for this huge national loss? What amends will be made?
I ask this because the tragedy in Sariska is
much larger than the frightening prospect of losing 18-odd magnificent
creatures that (once?) prowled this reserve. It is really about the philosophy,
the policy and the practice of conservation. The answer to Sariska - and to the
many Sariskas, festering - will then be to change the basic premise of the way
we approach wildlife. Otherwise the blood of Sariska's tigers will be on the
hands of their official managers and their unofficial propagandists. Nobody
else.
Let us look at the different political and
policy economies of this human-carnivore relationship. Over the past many
years, the country has obsessed itself with protecting the tiger. In the early
1970s, Project Tiger - a programme to protect the habitat of this flagship
species - began. In 1976, forests and wildlife were brought under the
Concurrent List to enable more centralised protection. From being an endangered
species, the tiger became an emblem: wildlife protection got subsumed, as
ecological historian Mahesh Rangarajan says, in a nationalist project. Over the
years, this obsession has grown.
The original 9 tiger reserves have grown to
28, spread over the country. The total land area protected under the reserves
is roughly 6 per cent of the forest area. A tiger habitat, once identified, is
demarcated; the area is either declared a national park (higher protection) or
remains a sanctuary. The status of a tiger reserve ensures coordination through
a Delhi based project tiger team, and Central funds: roughly, Rs 20-26 crore is
allocated each year for these reserves. The management approach has also been
universally tried. The aim is to keep the core area - the tiger's home -
pristine and free of biotic interference (people); the buffer area can have
conservation-oriented use.
The powerful wildlife bureaucracy - in it, I
include those within government (who run the conservation programme) as well as
those outside (who decide what goes on in the name of conservation) - has
ensured that this variety of working is carefully safeguarded. They do not like
any interference in the way they run the park business. They want us to believe
the key problem of the tiger is that too little money is spent on its
protection. What is really needed, they say, is forcefully implement wildlife
laws; this would curtail the rights of people living in the reserves,
strengthen policing and arm guards to the teeth to fight off poachers.
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