CONSERVATION

India'sMissingTigersDemocracy andeconomic developmentare driving India's giantcat toward extinction.

By JEREMY KAHN

DAWN AT KAt'<HA NATIONAL

Park in India's central highlandsis welcomed with a symphonyof animal sounds. The safariguides in their jeeps listen in­

tently, straining to pick out telltale disso-nant notes-the honk of a sambar, theshriek of a chital or the loud cough of alangur. These are alarm calls: they meanthat somewhere out there in the high, drygrass, a tiger is on the prowl.

Kanha is one of the last strongholds ofthe Royal Bengal tiger, perhaps theworld's fiercest terrestrial predator-andits most beautiful. The chance to glimpsethat signature orange and black coat at­tracts tens of thousands of tourists eachyear, who flock to this and India's 27other tiger reserves. Alarm calls can stillbe heard in the Kanha dawn, but manyof India's jungles have fallen disturbing­ly quiet.

The government-mn \Vildlife Instituteof India shocked the nation-and tigerlovers worldwide-in February when it re­leased a rigorous scientific survey estimat­ing India had just l,4n tigers left, a declineof more than 60 percent in five years. Pre­vious surveys had overestimated tigernumbers, but the new figures placed thebig cat on the cusp of extinction. India haspledged to save the tiger, but as the nationgrows richer the task is becoming muchmore difficult. In the 1970s, Prime Minis­ter Indira Gandhi presided over a rigid,largely socialist economy that limpedalong at what has often been derided as"the Hindu rate ofgrowth": a mere 3.5 per­cent. But she also had the centralized au­thority needed to launch a successful con-

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servation campaign. Today India is acharging capitalist elephant, barreling for­ward at 9 percent a year. But with econom­ic growth the supreme political priority,Prime Minister Manmohan Singh-whoperches precariously atop an increasinglyunwieldy and decentralized power struc­ture-is finding it much harder to help thegreat cat.

Although tigers have been endangeredfor decades, many experts had long held

out hope that the species could be rescued.Now even the optimists sound downbeat."My grandchildren may not see tigers intheir lifetime;' says Ashok Kumar, vicechairman of the Wildlife Trust of India, aprominent conservation group. Already,three tiger subspecies-the Bali, Caspianand Java tigers-have vanished, victims ofhunting and development, and no morethan 200 Siberian tigers now stalk Russia'sFar East. The Bengal tiger-whose popu-

NEWSWEEK I MAY S, 2008

lation in India accounts for about half ofall wild tigers in existence-seems headeddown a similar path.

India has been here before: in the early1970s its tiger population-estimated atclose to 40,000 at the end of the 19th cen­tury-had fallen below 2,000. Spurred toaction, Indira Gandhi, the iron lady ofIn­dian politics and a great lover of the tigers,banned its hunting and launched one ofthe most ambitious conservation pro-

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grams in history: Project Tiger. Stringentwildlife-protection laws were passed,dozens of reserves were ultimately created,thousands of villagers were forcibly relo­cated outside these parks, guards werehired to protect wildlife from poachingand programs were established to preserveforest land as well as the deer, antelopeand bison on which tigers prey. Within 15years, tiger populations had not only stabi­lized, they had come bounding back-

more than doubling, according to manyestimates.

But in the following 15 years, ProjectTiger lost its way. Complacency, neglectand corruption plagued the project, ac­cording to an Indian auditor general's re­port from 2006. The money dwindled, andwhat was appropriated was often si-

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CONSERVATION

SQUEEZED OUT: India'sgiant predator has many enemies, like poachers

phoned offfor other purposes by state gov­ernments. Forest guards lacked equip­ment-including radios, guns and evensimple boots. Vacancies also went unfilled,and as the average age of the guards andrangers crept toward 50, the frequency offoot patrols-essential for monitoringtigers and deterring poaching-declined.When new forest officials were hired, theywere often politically connected city slick­ers ignorant ofthe jungle.

The Forest Department also began tak­ing on wider responsibilities, diluting itsonce narrow focus on protecting wildlife.Park directors were judged as much for thework they did promoting ruraldevelopment and tourism asfor tiger protection. "The hugesums of money available forecodevelopment led to a mis­sion drift:' says Ullas Karanth,a leading tiger researcher whoworks with the Wildlife Con­servation So 'ety in India."The Forest Department gotdistracted."

At exactly lhi moment, In­dia's tigers began faeing a newand ominous threat. Boomingeconomic growth in neighbor­ing China has accelerated thedemand for tiger skins-afashion symbol in Tibet-andbones, an important ingredient in tradi­tional medicines and aphrodisiacs. Withno wild tigers left in China, India has be­come the prime source for the illegaltrade. Organized gangs of poachers travelthe country, systematically targeting In­dia's reserves and decimating its tigerpopulation. In the past 10 years, India hasseized the bones and skins of more than800 tigers-eight hides were captured justlast week-and this is assumed to be just afraction of the total killed.

Wildlife biologists conducting fieldstudies in reserves reported that tigerswere vanishing, but officials refused toacknowledge the precipitous decline."Poaching was just not taken seriously,"says Belinda Wright, executive director ofthe Wildlife Protection Society of India, agroup that works with the police to crackpoaching rings. Directors could be trans­ferred or demoted for reporting fallingtiger populations. Besides, the cats meanttourist dollars, which created a perverseincentive to cover up poaching. So ProjectTiger clung to inflated estimates derivedfrom analyzing tiger-paw prints, long af­ter experts had shown that such data wereunreliable. In some cases, conservation­ists suspect, officials deliberately fudgedthe numbers. In 2005 the government

56

claimed that there were 18 tigers inSariska, the closest reserve to Delhi, but astudy found it had been completelycleaned out by poachers-not a singletiger remains.

In the wake of this scandal, the Indiangovernment disbanded Project Tiger andreplaced it with a new National Tiger Con­servation Authority, mandated to bring thetiger back. Repeating the success of the1970s and 1980s, however, will be diffi­cult. Not only are population pressuresworse and poachers more organized, butIndia's political and economic dynamicshave been transformed.

Gandhi presidedover a one-partystate-bad fordemocracy, butgood for tigers.

"Indira Gandhi made Project Tigerhappen," Kumar says. Gandhi presidedover what was essentially a one-partystate: her Congress party not only con­trolled India's federal government, as ithad since independence, but it ntrolledmost state governments as well. That'scritical, because forests in India are stateproperty, and states have a large say overlogging and mining projects. "Indiracould pick up the phone," says Kumar,"and call any chief minister [the top stateofficial] and say, '\Vhy haven't you de­clared a sanctuary?' and they would do itbecause no one dared def)r her."

Current Prime Minister Singh, mean­while, is no Indira Gandhi. She was acharismatic populist. He's a technocratwho took the prime minister's job afterSonia Gandhi, Indira's daughter-in-lawand current head of the ruling Congress

party, declined the post. It's Sonia whonow calls the shots in the Congress party,not Singh, and both have failed to usetheir offices as bully pulpits on tigerconservation.

Unlike in Indira Gandhi's day, more­over, Congress's power now depends onthe most fragile of coalitions. With a gen­eral election expected Jlext year, the partyis wary of any action that may cost itvotes, particularly among the rural vil­lagers who live alongside India's lasttigers. At the same time, many of India'sstate governments are now in the hands ofregional parties that did not exist in Indira

Gandhi's time and over whichCongress and th • c ntral gov­ernment in cw D lhi havelittle leverillit:. 'Th problemis, the land is wned and man­aged by tate governments;'says Karanth. "They don't feelthey are part ofthis. Unless wehave models of tiger conserva­tion that are almost . tate­spe 'fic, it will b very difficultto effect reco ery."

Many chiefministers, how­ever, are more interested infeathering their own politicalnests than in conservation.And as wildlife advocates liketo point out, tigers don't vote.

Nor do they bring in wads ofmoney~un­like industrial deveillper who want tobuild hydroelectric dam or bauxite minesin th ~iadle of prime tiger habitat. Thetale ar also hypersensitive to anything

that might be construed as Lmdue med­dling on their turf by New Delhi, compli­cating a national recovery plan. Ratherthan accepting the distLirbing results ofthe latest Wildlife InstitLlte study, somestates that have lost large numbers oftigers, such as Orissa-where the chiefminister hails from Congress's livalBharatiya lanata Party-have insisted thegovernment numbers are wrong and or­dered their own recounts, wasting timeand money that could be spent sa iogthose tigers that remain.

In response to the current risis, theIndian government has announced acrash effort aimed at rescuing the tiger. Itwill create eight new tiger reserves and anew armed force to protect tigers. It alsoannounced a $153 million progTam thatincludes additional money for anti­poaching efforts, including the hiring ofretired soldiers to act as forest guards,new equipment for monitoring tigers anda tenfold increase, to $25,000 per family,in the amount it will pay villagers to relo­cate outside tiger reserves. Under this

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CASH CROP: Farms andfactories in Orissa eat into animal habitats

scheme, the government estimates it canmove 200,000 people out of tiger sanctu­aries. It has also set a May 15 deadline forstates to come up with their own preserva­tion strategies.

Conservationists have applauded theseplans, but implementation will be tricky."In India a lot ofmoney can disappear justpropping up an existing, faulty system,"says the Wildlife Protection Society'sWright. In2006, following the Sariska de­bacle, th government created a newWtldlife Crime Control Bureau to take onpoachers. Two years later, the new agencystilI exists mostly on paper; it has yet toinvestigate a single poachingcase. And even some of thegovernment plan's most ambi­tiou points can't address thescale of the problem. Forinstance, the government'svillage-relocation programsounds impressive-until oneremembers that India is ateeming nation, strugglingund~ the crush of 1.1 billionpeople. side from the highHimalayas, hardly an inch ofthe country has not been set­tled. Some 3 million peoplelive inside India's protectedfor sts, and an additional 4million live in areas adjacentto them. So the pressure ontiger habitat will remain in­tense even after these 200,000villagers are moved.

Karanth and some othertiger con ervationists also ac­cuse the government of "schizophrenia,"since Singh's administration last yearpushed through a new law that will al­low traditional forest-dwelling peoples toclaim ownership over forestland. Some ofthese tribes had pr viously been removedfrom their ancestral homes in the name ofprotecting wildlife and the environment,although in practice this was frequently apretext to seize land for mining or indus­trial uses. The disaffected tribes turnedagainst th guvemment, providing fuel toIndia's growing insurgencies, particularlythe powerful Maoist guerrillas known asNaxalites. The new tribal-rights law, then,is more than a way to correct historical in­justices-it is a counterinsurgency tactic.But while existing tiger reserves will bedeclared off-limits to tribal claims, thenew law could result in people s carvingup potential tiger habitat.

The Naxalites pose other hazards totiger recovery as well. The rebels holdsway over vast tracts of remote forest incentral and eastern India that might erve

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as prime tiger habitat. Their presence hasprevented forest officials from even at­tempting to count the tiger populationin some areas-and rendered conserva­tion efforts impossible. P. K. Sen, a formerdirector of Project Tiger, has estimatedthat as much as 30 percent of the tiger'srange in India is inaccessible due to in­surgency. While there is no evidence thatNaxalites are involved in tiger poaching,without wildlife protection in theselawless regions local people hunt deerand boar that would otherv..jse serve asfood for tigers. An adult tiger must eatat least 50 deer-size animals a year to

survive; the less prey, the fewer tigers.Previous studies found that fewer than

halfof India's tigers lived inside official re­serves. The rest inhabited other undevel­oped areas. But the latest Wildlife Institutesurvey discovered that many of thesetigers have disappeared. And it isn't hardto see why: India has lost thousands ofsquare kilometers in forest cover over thepast 20 years-the result ofdam building,logging, mining and rural development."Where humans are there, tigers are notthere. Where livestock is there, tigers arenot there. Where forest cover is missing,tigers are not there," Rajesh Gopal, head ofthe National Tiger Conservation Authori­ty, told a meeting ofIndia's national-parkdirectors at Kanha in mid-March.

The conservation authority wants topreserve-and in some cases restore­forested buffer zones around nationalparks. It al 0 wants to create green corri­dors that will allow tigers to move be­tween protected sanctuaries. These thor­oughfares are considered essential to

ensuring that India's tigers do not be­come trapped in genetically isolatedpockets. But the conservation authorityhas no power to create such vital corri­dors. Doing so will require coordinatedaction by state governments and multiplefederal and state bureaucracies, many ofwhich have diametrically opposed inter­ests-exactly the sort of problem modernIndia is least equipped to handle.

Maintaining the national economicboom is clearly the top priority for thegovernment. And with good reason: it isthe escalator that has lifted miIJions ofIndians out of abject poverty. But this dy-

namic makes the trade-offs be­tween development and con­servation tougher for theprime minister. While mostbelieve Singh sincerely wantsto save the tiger, the cat has nonatural constituency: India'snew business elites have notadopted the tiger as an impor­tant cause the way wealthyphilanthropists in the UnitedStates and Europe have. Norhas environmental degrada­tion in India attracted thesort ofbroad-based concern ithas in the West. "India is hell­bent on going into the sun­rise of development, and thetiger has been seen as a bitof a nuisance," says Wright."India has never seen the tigeras an asset."

One morning in Kanha inMarch, a tiger lay on a bed of

fallen leaves at the foot of a sal tree, itsdusky orange fur and black stripes mak­ing it hard to spot in the dappled sunlightthat filtered through the dense forestcanopy. Elephants carrying camera­wielding tourists on their backs circledthe big cat as their handlers jockeyed forthe best vantage point-a daily ritual thatpark officials have dubbed "The TigerShow." Kanha is considered among thebetter-managed tiger reserves in India,one of the areas the tiger authority hopeswill provide a springboard for the big cat'srecovery nationwide. It has a healthy pop­ulation of89 adult cats and corridors con­necting it to other forests. People livingaround the park are generally supportiveof the tiger's presence, which has broughttourism and economic growth to the area.But watching the orange and black cat sit­ting under the sal tree, licking its paws,oblivious to the peril of its species, onecouldn't help but think the final creditshave already begun to roll on India's ownlong-running tiger show. •

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