From the noises coming out of the environment ministry, it appears that the latest tiger census will give us cause to celebrate. According to the Press Trust of India, a senior official has confirmed that the report, scheduled to be released on Tuesday, shows a positive trend: that is, more tigers now than in the last count in 2010.
But while efforts to save the tiger might be paying off, success of conservation has come with its own price ‒ a growing number of cases of conflict between tigers and humans.
In December, forest officials arrested three men living in the Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu for killing a tiger. The farmers were found to have poisoned the animal in retaliation for the killing of a buffalo and to prevent further attacks.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated that there were 66 tiger deaths in 2014. Three were killed in fights with other tigers, five died of disease or old age, and four were confirmed to have been killed by humans. The rest are all assumed to be victims of poaching until forensic reports prove otherwise, said S P Yadav, deputy inspector general with the authority.
While poaching has always been the biggest threat to India’s tiger conservation efforts, animal-human conflict has now emerged as an equally serious challenge. “When the tiger numbers go high in the core area or the breeding area, they move out,” Yadav said. “When they move out, they enter into human-dominated area and there is conflict.”
“In the past, maybe 50 years ago, when all of it was good forest, a tiger could easily move 700 kilometres in search of new territory,” said Anish Andheria, president of the Wildlife Conservation Trust in Mumbai. “Now our parks are on average 1,000 square kilometres, which is nothing really. That would be 50 kilometres by 20 kilometres. A tiger can walk 20 kilometres in a night and cross from one edge to the other.”
Unplanned development
Even among remaining protected forest areas, those that do not have large-bodied prey animals cannot become home for tigers.
India became acutely aware of the crisis of dwindling tiger numbers when the population fell to a low of 1,411 as reported in the 2006 tiger census. Since then, conservation efforts seem to have worked and more than 1,700 tigers were counted in the 2010 census. A rising tiger population in years of rapid development has thrown up a new conundrum.
“Development planning and conservation planning for tigers are not going hand in hand,” said Shekhar Kumar Niraj, India director of the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC. “That’s the reason that you are seeing more conflict than earlier. This kind of unplanned development will definitely become counter-productive and will start manifesting as more conflict.”
The Ken-Betwa river-linking project is one such development programme that threatens the Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh. Panna lost all its tigers in 2008, but after a concerted, scientific effort to reintroduce the big cats the reserve now has a respectable population of close to 20 tigers. The Ken-Betwa plan now threatens to cut the area of the park available to tiger by one-tenth. The river linking will submerge more than 4,000 hectares of Panna Tiger Reserve, according to the Environmental Impact Assessment report of the project.
Poaching, the persistent problem
At the same time, the illegal wildlife trade in the country is evolving. Poaching in India has largely been driven by demand from China for wildlife parts. Now, poachers also cater to a growing market within the country. Niraj of TRAFFIC said that there was a growing domestic demand for tiger skin to be used in black magic.
He also notes that different poaching networks are colluding now to form bigger poaching syndicates to get access to bigger markets. “Now you find tiger poaching and pangolin poaching networks working together and meeting each other's demand,” he said. “That is very dangerous because you see a very vast coverage and impact.”
India has not managed to get a handle on its poaching problem and Niraj feels that skewed policy, skewed resource allocation, lack of compensation planning and coordination are to blame. “Tiger reserves get a lot of funds, but tigers do not exist only in the tiger reserves,” he said. “If you look at the resource scenarios between the tiger reserves and the non-tiger reserves like a normal sanctuary or national park, they are absolutely poles apart.”
Counting tigers
The number of tiger deaths has remained stubbornly high in the last four years, when more than 275 big cats died. The number in itself is not alarming. Wildlife experts point out that deaths in a given tiger population are cyclical. Tigers that attain maturity together after a good breeding year might all venture out to seek new territories at the same time and come into conflict with each other or with human beings. Similarly, a generation of old tigers might die in the same year or consecutive years.
“When you have a population of 1,700 tigers, every year 200 tigers will die,” Niraj said. “More animals must have died through natural causes and they might be deep within the forest, by a river or something. So [66 tiger deaths] is under-reporting. But we must worry about the ones which we definitely know were poached.”
Andheria hopes that the new tiger census will show a further increase in India’s tiger population. “I think it will go beyond 2,000 this time,” Andheria said, having done back-of-the-envelope calculations based on his visits to tiger habitats across the country. “That will be a great thing because it means we have turned the tide.”
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But while efforts to save the tiger might be paying off, success of conservation has come with its own price ‒ a growing number of cases of conflict between tigers and humans.
In December, forest officials arrested three men living in the Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu for killing a tiger. The farmers were found to have poisoned the animal in retaliation for the killing of a buffalo and to prevent further attacks.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority has estimated that there were 66 tiger deaths in 2014. Three were killed in fights with other tigers, five died of disease or old age, and four were confirmed to have been killed by humans. The rest are all assumed to be victims of poaching until forensic reports prove otherwise, said S P Yadav, deputy inspector general with the authority.
While poaching has always been the biggest threat to India’s tiger conservation efforts, animal-human conflict has now emerged as an equally serious challenge. “When the tiger numbers go high in the core area or the breeding area, they move out,” Yadav said. “When they move out, they enter into human-dominated area and there is conflict.”
“In the past, maybe 50 years ago, when all of it was good forest, a tiger could easily move 700 kilometres in search of new territory,” said Anish Andheria, president of the Wildlife Conservation Trust in Mumbai. “Now our parks are on average 1,000 square kilometres, which is nothing really. That would be 50 kilometres by 20 kilometres. A tiger can walk 20 kilometres in a night and cross from one edge to the other.”
Unplanned development
Even among remaining protected forest areas, those that do not have large-bodied prey animals cannot become home for tigers.
India became acutely aware of the crisis of dwindling tiger numbers when the population fell to a low of 1,411 as reported in the 2006 tiger census. Since then, conservation efforts seem to have worked and more than 1,700 tigers were counted in the 2010 census. A rising tiger population in years of rapid development has thrown up a new conundrum.
“Development planning and conservation planning for tigers are not going hand in hand,” said Shekhar Kumar Niraj, India director of the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC. “That’s the reason that you are seeing more conflict than earlier. This kind of unplanned development will definitely become counter-productive and will start manifesting as more conflict.”
The Ken-Betwa river-linking project is one such development programme that threatens the Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh. Panna lost all its tigers in 2008, but after a concerted, scientific effort to reintroduce the big cats the reserve now has a respectable population of close to 20 tigers. The Ken-Betwa plan now threatens to cut the area of the park available to tiger by one-tenth. The river linking will submerge more than 4,000 hectares of Panna Tiger Reserve, according to the Environmental Impact Assessment report of the project.
Poaching, the persistent problem
At the same time, the illegal wildlife trade in the country is evolving. Poaching in India has largely been driven by demand from China for wildlife parts. Now, poachers also cater to a growing market within the country. Niraj of TRAFFIC said that there was a growing domestic demand for tiger skin to be used in black magic.
He also notes that different poaching networks are colluding now to form bigger poaching syndicates to get access to bigger markets. “Now you find tiger poaching and pangolin poaching networks working together and meeting each other's demand,” he said. “That is very dangerous because you see a very vast coverage and impact.”
India has not managed to get a handle on its poaching problem and Niraj feels that skewed policy, skewed resource allocation, lack of compensation planning and coordination are to blame. “Tiger reserves get a lot of funds, but tigers do not exist only in the tiger reserves,” he said. “If you look at the resource scenarios between the tiger reserves and the non-tiger reserves like a normal sanctuary or national park, they are absolutely poles apart.”
Counting tigers
The number of tiger deaths has remained stubbornly high in the last four years, when more than 275 big cats died. The number in itself is not alarming. Wildlife experts point out that deaths in a given tiger population are cyclical. Tigers that attain maturity together after a good breeding year might all venture out to seek new territories at the same time and come into conflict with each other or with human beings. Similarly, a generation of old tigers might die in the same year or consecutive years.
“When you have a population of 1,700 tigers, every year 200 tigers will die,” Niraj said. “More animals must have died through natural causes and they might be deep within the forest, by a river or something. So [66 tiger deaths] is under-reporting. But we must worry about the ones which we definitely know were poached.”
Andheria hopes that the new tiger census will show a further increase in India’s tiger population. “I think it will go beyond 2,000 this time,” Andheria said, having done back-of-the-envelope calculations based on his visits to tiger habitats across the country. “That will be a great thing because it means we have turned the tide.”