Big cats are a big deal in India, with the majestic Royal Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris) as the National Animal, the conservation of big cats takes centre stage in the nation’s conservation and forests’ policy. India is also a vivid biodiversity hotspot and home to a total of fifty-one Tiger Reserves. As the world trudges along the pathway to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals, a strategic approach has enabled India to double the number of tigers in the country from close to fifteen hundred in 2011 to over three thousand across the country in 2018.
According to Ramesh Kumar Pandey, an Uttar Pradesh cadre Indian Forest Service officer, the positive and discernible changes in the population and health of big cats in the country is a result of a combined approach on both verticals – that of policy changes as well as strategic enforcement and security enhancement measures.
Tracing the Policy Changes
The most important and significant legislation in India which aims to safeguard the lives of wildlife in the country is the Wild Life Protection Act, 1972. It was enacted for the protection of plants and animal species since India had only five designated national parks at the time of its enactment. Among other reforms, the Act established schedules of protected plant and animal species; hunting or harvesting these species was largely outlawed and further in 2002, the Act was amended to make its enforcement further strict in nature. The Act provides for the protection of wild animals, birds and plants; and for matters connected therewith. Its enforcement and extension cover the whole of India. It has six schedules that give varying degrees of protection to the various flora and fauna, of which Schedule I and part II of Schedule II provide absolute protection to the species as offenses under these are prescribed the highest penalties.
Up to April 2010, there had been 16 convictions under this act relating to the death of tigers.
The Amendment of the Wild Life Protection Act not only made the prison sentences and penalties harsher, in case of wildlife crimes, it also mandated for the creation of two additional bodies – the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), and the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) under the aegis of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) at the central level to take upon an international and security-driven approach towards wildlife crimes such as poaching, smuggling, and illegal trade across the nation and its boundaries, as well as establish Project Tiger – an initiative to ensure targeted and method-driven conservation approaches, especially contextualized keeping in mind the Royal Bengal Tiger.
Further, this initiative was extended to other megafaunal species such as Rhino and Elephants as well.
Case Study: Pilibhit Tiger Reserve, Uttar Pradesh
The two major threats to big cats and in particular tigers in our country are poaching and anthropogenic factors. The latter in turn lead to a plethora of issues and conflicts in most Tiger Reserves and forests of the nation.
One such conflict is the man-tiger conflict. Man-tiger conflicts are an extreme form of human-wildlife conflict, which occurs for various reasons and has claimed more human lives than attacks by any of the other big cats. A fact to note in the context of tiger attacks in India is the difference between a man-killer and a man-eater tiger, reasons such as starvation, reduced prey base, old age/illness tend to drive a tiger to be a man-eater. Human conflicts with the tiger are the most difficult to manage and incur large losses, the tiger being the flagship species of Indian fauna and a part of the mega-faunal species that include elephants, rhinos and leopards as well.
Uttar Pradesh ranks eighth amongst the states of India inhabited by the endangered Royal Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris) with two hundred plus tigers of varying age categories calling it’s three tiger reserves (Amangarh, Dudhwa and Pilibhit) their abode. On an average, four to five people lose their lives in Man-Tiger encounters in Uttar Pradesh each year The fact that ties these two pieces of statistics together is that although there is a steady yet sure rise in the number of tigers in the tiger reserves of Uttar Pradesh, their unprecedented interaction with humans is also on the rise, highest in any state of the country. Being the most populous state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, with its burgeoning population has provided ample ground for the occurrences of man-tiger conflicts in regions with overlapping populations of human and wildlife. Such cases have become more rampant and in the villages on the fringes of the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve in the past few years. In 2019, a tiger was even lynched by a group of men due to spite and poor information.
However, of late, technological approaches have reduced the number of such conflicts in the region. The forest officials have been using technological aids to assess the location, movement and activity of animals, including drones, tracking devices and camera equipment. They have also Establishment an instant response mechanism and modus operandi in place, with inputs from locals, social workers, vets and biologists with adequate funds and gear to deal efficiently with emergencies.
Enforcement and Curbing Wildlife Crime
Considering the complications of poaching and the high-risk jobs of forest officials – especially the field workers such as forest watchers and forest guards, Ramesh Pandey introduced a mobile application in his department to phenomenal results. Within a year of its introduction, M-STrIPES, which stands for Monitoring System for Tigers-Intensive Protection and Ecological Status, has been instrumental in catching 200 poachers in a patrol field that covers 2,50,000 km.
The model of M-Stripes was developed by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in 2010. However, it was only in 2018 that it was transformed into a mobile application. “India is home to close to half of the world’s Tiger population, and it was in our hands to protect them,” Pandey says.
As habitat fragmentation and shrinking of habitat due to construction or other obstructions in the forest area and encroachment in forest lands by the people on the fringes, leading to pressure on the limited available natural resources in our national parks become more rampant by the day, it is essential for our forest communities to come together in collaboration to create sustainable and secure habitats for all. India’s leading two-pronged approach of policy and enforcement has made indelible imprints on the pages of the conservation story, yet we still have a long way to go – from dealing with people’s antagonistic behaviour towards animals to combating notorious wildlife criminals.
