There is growing encroachment into the buffer zone surrounding the Corbett National Park, and increasing human-animal conflict. Not surprisingly, the victims are mostly tigers
The tiger is a large-hearted gentleman with boundless courage and that when he is exterminated — as exterminated he will be if public opinion does not rally to his support — India will be the poorer for having lost the finest of her fauna.” These words of Jim Corbett kept ringing in my ears as we drove into the Jhirna range of the Corbett National Park on a grey, freezing, marrow-chilling morning on Sunday. With our eyes peeled and ears strained to pick up the slightest sight or sound, we were looking for the bounty that forests can suddenly confer upon one in the form of a stunning glimpse of one of its regal denizens or a magical play of sunlight on foliage in the heart of a dense forest’s darkness. Yet, somewhere in the recesses of our minds the desire to see the king of India’s jungle and the emperor of the Park in his/her full glory, kept raising its head.
The morning progressed and the Emperor remained elusive; we sought to soothe our growing frustration with a familiar device—telling ourselves that sighting a tiger was a matter of luck and could not, in any case, be the only aim of a jungle safari. Being in the forest, with its deep silences, swaying elephant grass, trees-now brooding in the darkness spread by low-flying clouds, now gleaming with the Sun’s gold, and the tense, still interludes following the barking deer’s warning call that the Emperor was on the prowl, was its own reward.
Nevertheless, the tiger continued stalking our mind. According to the tiger census report, released by the National Tiger Conservation Authority on March 28, 2011, the Corbett Tiger Reserve, spread over 1,288 square kilometres and comprising the Corbett National Park and the Sonanadi Wildlife Sanctuary and Forest Reserve, was supposed to have 214 of India’s tiger population of 1,706. Had there been a decline in the numbersIJ Had poaching become more rampant than generally fearedIJ
According to the Wildlife Protection Society of India, 923 tigers are known to have been killed from 1994 to 2010. This makes for an average annual toll of 54. According to a report in Down to Earth, a record number of 274 deaths occurred in India in the last four year. Of these, only 82 were due to natural causes and the rest were caused by poaching or undeterminable reasons. A report in July this year cites the Wildlife Protection Society of India to say that out of the five tigers that died in Uttarakhand until then in 2014, three had occurred in the State’s Terai belt which is a part of Corbett Tiger Reserve and its buffer zone. At least one of the five had then been attributed to poaching.
According to a cover story by Mr Kumar Sambhav S in Down To Earth (July 2013), three tiger carcasses were found inside the Corbett National Park in a week. The report further stated that 32 tigers had died in Corbett the past two-and-a-half years. According to the records of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, only 11 of them had died of natural causes or poaching, while the causes of 21 other deaths remained unknown. As, however, Mr Kumar Sambhav shows with maps and careful analysis, the frequency and circumstances of these deaths did not support the natural cause theory.
A number of measures to curb poaching have doubtless been announced. The Ministry of Environment and Forests is reportedly planning to introduce unmanned aerial vehicles or drones to keep close surveillance over the Corbett National Park to detect poaching and other illegal activities. These, costing four lakh rupees each and capable of flying at 40 kmph on the auto-pilot mode, recording images and videos and transmitting these instantly to the control room that has been set up, will be useful not only against tiger poaching, but in counting the number of animals, coordinating rescue operations for injured or stranded animals during floods and other natural calamities, and monitoring activity in remote and inaccessible forest areas.
Drones can play a very useful role provided the information they transmit is instantly noted and acted upon. The point needs to be made, particularly since some of the measures announced earlier, have not wrought wonders. An example is the report in 2011 about the installation of 200 hidden cameras at undisclosed locations in Rajaji National Park and Corbett National Park and the dense forest areas in their vicinity, to monitor what was described as “illegal activity”. The impact, either of these cameras or of the dozen of them installed earlier at the Corbett National Park, seems not so far to have moved mountains. Nor has the greater leeway given to forest officers who would now not be arrested for killing an alleged poacher until a magisterial inquiry indicts him or her.
Some no doubt point out that indications are that deaths due to poaching this year will be significantly less than last year’s when the figures are finally tallied. Even if this happens, it would be wise to keep one’s optimism under check because declines in the past have been followed by increases, sometimes steep. Besides, poaching is not the only threat. According to a report in The Business Standard by Geetanjali Krishna, an important one is the resorts that have mushroomed along the boundaries of the Corbett Tiger Reserve, that cater to the troves of tourists who descend every year to see the tiger.
The area is a silence zone. While a few resorts scrupulously adhere to the norms, going even to the extent of not providing television sets in the cottages, showing documentary films about forests and tigers in the evening, besides maintaining libraries stocked with books on nature, most generate levels of noise bound to cause severe disturbance to the animals. Many of them have discotheque, dancing and loud revelry, generating high levels of noise that frighten and stress animals. And stress adversely affects animal breeding.
The mushrooming of resorts has also caused a scramble for land and land prices to shoot up. The Supreme Court’s directive to the Centre to regulate tourism in tiger reserves has led to some, albeit still inadequate, measures to rein in unregulated growth. All this has led to growing encroachment into the buffer zone surrounding the National Park, and increasing human-animal conflict. Not surprisingly, the victims are mostly tigers.