Celebrated wildlife broadcaster Sir David Attenborough and UK-based World land Trust (WlT) have partnered with the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) to save tigers in the Corbett Reserve in Uttarakhand. This will be done by restoration of the crucial Chilkiya-Kota corridor connecting Corbett Tiger Reserve and Ramnagar Forest Division in the State. There are about 200 tigers in the region.
A major component of this £1 million project is the relocation of an entire village comprising 320 families based on their voluntary decision.
According to Dr Sandeep Tiwari, Deputy Director, WTI, this will be a major boost to the conservation of tigers in the Terai Arc landscape. This three-km-wide and 500-metre-long Chilkiya-Kota corridor is vital for conservation efforts due to its proximity to Corbett Tiger Reserve, home to the highest density of tigers in the world. The reserve also has around eight per cent of the country’s entire tiger population.
Encroachment in the corridor, going back to nearly 50 years, is one of the major impediments in its conservation. Over the last three years, nine people have reportedly been killed by tigers in and around the corridor. Countless livestock have also fallen prey to both tigers and leopards.
Elephants also create difficulties for people settled within the corridor by trampling and raiding crops. Hence, the WlT-WTI corridor project is aimed at benefitting not just the wildlife but also the local communities by reducing human-wildlife conflict. The villagers have agreed to the relocation, and in the new settlements they will have their own houses and land ownership.
“To conserve wildlife, especially elephants and tigers, as well as to ameliorate the suffering of people due to conflict with wildlife, rehabilitating the villagers to a safer place is the only option,” said Dr Tiwari, who is also the Regional WTI Head, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.
“This will be a win-win situation for both the villagers who are living in poor conditions and wildlife,” he said.
The corridor encompasses one village divided into three segments and the project has been designed in three phases. The first phase would concentrate on the voluntary relocation of around 50 families from the Panod section of the corridor; the area with the highest incidents of human-wildlife conflict.
The project is extremely ambitious. The cost of land in this area is the highest WlT has ever spent on any land acquisition project worldwide. WTI needs to raise approximately £800,000 more towards Phase I of the project and WlT intends to continue fundraising to help plug this gap.
According to experts, the project is particularly important as it involves the relocation of local communities from the corridor areas of habitats for which the Ministry of Environment and Forest is yet to have a policy. The present compensation package and policy are only limited to relocation of local communities from tiger reserves. However, the corridors are equally important in conservation, they said.
The WlT’s other priority is the Garo Green Spine Conservation Project in Garo Hills of Meghalaya, where the project aims to secure elephant corridors and restore degraded habitat surrounding Nokrek and Balpakram National Parks. This has been underway for the last few years with plans for further expansion in 2015 and beyond.