Why the ‘real world’ does not get real

In this age of activism, do-gooders get to choose what good they may do; besides, it is really tough to fix real problems

The Bengal Post, 23 December, 2010

How much do you think is a forest guard’s salary? I popped the question when a fellow delegate at a neat little film festival on tribal arts in Bhubaneswar paused for a breather last week. She was lamenting the sorry state of our forests and wildlife and wondering if corporate-media initiatives were the last hope to save the wilderness.

I stood nodding for a while and when she sounded positively pained by the plight of poor forest guards, asked my first question. “Salary, well,” she said, “could not be more than three-four thousand for sure.” I told her that a forest guard, depending on seniority, took home Rs 10-18,000 a month. “Oh, I see,” she instantly wondered, “that’s quite a lot more than what we pay our driver.”

Now, for the first time, she seemed to be thinking. Surely, with that kind of salary, those forest guards did not require any charity. But then, she asked me, why was conservation still in such a mess? What was the problem?

The evening nip in the air was comfortable for northerners and we could go on discussing the issue. But artist Jatin Das, the one-man army organising the film festival, walked by. Like most artists of his stature, Das commands a lot of attention. As the delegates craned to hear him talk, the issues changed fast.

But the question returned with my fellow delegate later in the evening. Over a smoke, in a corner of the tastefully landscaped plot owned by Jatin Das Centre for Arts, I tried to find her answers.


No, forest guards do not need charity if they get their salaries on time (which does not happen in a few states like Bihar or Maharashtra). They earn enough to afford two uniforms, a jacket, a torch or even a tiffin box. But they are too few. In most states, vacancies are huge and the new recruits are mostly hired on contract for a maximum of Rs 3,000 a month. Corporates and NGOs can buy these temporary staff this and that. But they will still lack the authority and, more importantly, the accountability of a bona fide forest guard.

So one problem is the unwillingness of the states to fill in vacancies and ensure a workforce of well-paid regular forest guards who have a career and a pension to look forward to. Temporary ground staff can still be hired seasonally to supplement this workforce and to keep the local communities involved.

The second part of this problem is the states’ refusal to bear the recurring costs of conservation. A recent corporate-media telethon raised some Rs 5 crore to buy some sets of vehicles and an assortment of equipment for some tiger reserves. The Centre spends hundreds of crores for tiger conservation and makes such one-time purchases at a simply incomparable scale. But even if the Centre buys a jeep for each range officer and a motorbike for each forest guard, the fleets will need fuel to run on -- a recurring cost the states are supposed to bear and, in most cases, refuse to.

If the number of regular staff is one problem, the unreasonable workload is another. Forest staff must focus on protection. They should not be burdened with tourism duties, including facilitating VIPs, or relocating villages or doing research. Regular tourism duties make them corrupt. They become servile handling VIPs. They are often highhanded in negotiations and usually bad researchers. We need specially trained and specifically assigned personnel at different levels for such work. The regular sanctioned staff strength of a forest should do only what they are supposed to: watch over the forest and its wildlife.

The next problem, I told her, was of training. From a guard to a conservator, everyone must be trained adequately before serving at a wildlife area. The long-term solution is to create a wildlife service, perhaps a specialised short service, within the IFS. For now, we need specific and practical field courses tailor-made for all levels. We also need to churn out a bunch of good wildlife veterinarians to be deployed as regular/contract staff in each of our wildlife units.

This brought us to an even bigger problem: the sensitive issue of political will. Committed and performing field officers are always rare. Time and again, those few who actually make a difference are shunted out for offending powerful interests. But even state-of-the-art kits will rust if we do not have officers to lead from the front in an hour of crisis. Take the recent example from Ranthambhore. Range officer Daulat Singh was not mauled because he did not have adequate equipment. He suffered injuries because he was forced to act unwisely by his seniors. Availability of a few fancy kits may only encourage such foolhardy bravado in the absence of able and informed leadership.

The last on my list of administrative problems was the issue of mishandling losses suffered by local communities. Be it crop or cattle loss or restriction on livelihood practices, compensation has to be reasonable, transparent and prompt. At present, the process brings more agony than relief. In case of crop/life loss, assessment of damage should not be a bureaucratic (hence corrupt) process. For the larger issue of livelihood losses, benefits of tourism must be shared generously with the communities. Locals should also get preference for jobs with the forest department.

No, this list of problems, I told the now-exhausted delegate, did not include pressure of development (for profit or survival) and population. Those are almost philosophical debates nobody can win. However, redressing the administrative issues listed above is very much within our mortal scope. Yet, corporate-media spectacles are happy to donate some clothes and a few cars. Why, they could at least buy single-premium insurances to cover all forest guards in the country.

It was probably a giveaway and the keen delegate asked me if I had anything against a certain telethon. On the backfoot, I ducked, kind of. The media’s job is to correct public policies. The corporate’s job is to make profits out of ethical businesses. If both had even limited success in their primary jobs, the crisis they joined hands to fight so spectacularly on live TV would not have existed.

She dismissed me. “That’s a different thing, haan. We know how the real world works. But, at least, they did something, no? Spread so much awareness, no?”

I could see they really did. I nodded. She shuffled on her feet. Jatin Das walked by with an announcement. The bar was open.

Now, Who’s Crouching?

Open mag does its turn to stall an eco-tourism scam in Rajasthan
Taking note of the report Crouching Tourists, Hidden Tiger (Open, 28 November - 6 December 2010), Environment and Forests minister Jairam Ramesh has shot off a letter to Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, requesting his “personal intervention…for preventing the Kankwari fort from being put to use for tourism”.

In the report published in Open, Rajasthan’s Chief Wildlife Warden HM Bhatia admitted that the fort renovation was funded by the state tourism department. “Our policy is to promote eco-tourism. We do not allow people to stay inside forests, but we will work out an arrangement keeping the safety of tourists and the security of wild animals in mind,” he said.

In his letter dated 2 December, Ramesh wrote: “It is learnt that the said fort has been restored with support from the tourism department, perhaps with a view to foster tourist visitation/stay. This is a matter of serious concern as it violates the norms of inviolate space. The government of India has been providing considerable central assistance (100 per cent under Project Tiger) for making the core area inviolate through village relocation. The core areas been to be kept inviolate as per Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and hence, tourism activities need to be strictly regulated, with a view to foster them in a passed manner in the buffer area. Hence, I request tour personal intervention in this regard for preventing the Kankwari fort from being put to use for tourism.”

Meanwhile, in Madhya Pradesh, RTI activist Ajay Dubey sought protection from the Jabalpur High Court, following the expose in the same Open report that state Chief Wildlife Warden HS Pabla emailed some of the state’s top tourism players, warning them of the PIL filed by Dubey that sought a ban on tourism in core tiger reserve areas as per the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and urging them to “take whatever steps…to protect” their interests. The case will again come up in January next year.

While the National Tiger Conservation Authority in its reply before the high court admitted that Section 38V (4) (i) of the WPA provided for keeping the core/critical tiger habitats inviolate, a number of conservationists, including National Board for Wildlife member Kishore Rithe, have sought Ramesh’s intervention in the matter.

STOP SAMBAR TRANSLOCATION

In the same letter, Ramesh also pointed out that a large number of sambar was being captured and translocated from the core area of Sariska to Kumbalgarh wildlife sanctuary. Requesting Gehlot to inquire into the matter and stop any further sambar translocation, Ramesh wrote: “Such operations can have considerable ramifications on the predator-prey balance in the habitat. The NTCA, the statutory body in the context of tiger conservation, has not even been consulted in this regard. As you are aware, we are in the process of rebuilding Sariska, and considerable effort and resources have gone into the translocation of tigers. Hence, a drastic intervention involving removal of a major prey species from the core area of a tiger reserve, without any technical advice is a very serious issue.”

Crouching Tourists, Hidden Tiger

Behind the face-off between the wildlife tourism lobby and the Ministry of Environment and Forests lies a network of hidden interests that exercises monopoly power and prospers on hypocrisy and corruption. While one state forest official helps hoteliers protect their businesses, another develops a tourism facility on the very spot from where a forest village is being evicted. More than stricter regulations, it’s time for transparency
OPEN | BHOPAL, JAIPUR AND RAMNAGAR | 26 November, 2010

HOW COME a country that is losing acres of forests and dozens of wild animals by the hour has time to debate, of all things, wildlife tourism?

It was late evening at Delhi’s India International Centre. After a rare screening of Pradeep Krishen’s Electric Moon, an excellent satire on desperate brown sahibs and their ingenious ways of conning unsuspecting foreign wildlife tourists, a few guests were animatedly discussing the merits of a proposed ban on tourism in critical tiger forests. An elderly lady stood there listening for a while, before popping the exasperated question.

The answer may seem obvious, but it is not. Wildlife tourism is mostly concentrated in areas where tigers and other big animals are relatively abundant. So the nature of tourism has a direct bearing on India’s more successful conservation stories. Since such success stories are still few and far between, the country had better not take chances.

On the surface, battlelines appear drawn between the Government and the wildlife tourism lobby on this very idealistic premise. Scratch this surface, though, and it becomes a no-holds-barred battle between sarkari power and private profit. What makes this an almost even contest is the presence of big corporate chains, the not-so-secret stake of many renowned conservationists, and the unusual interest of many top forest officers in wildlife tourism.

On 9 September 2010, the Jabalpur High Court asked the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and Madhya Pradesh forest department to respond to a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking an immediate stay on tourism in core forest areas. Chief Wildlife Warden HS Pabla, the top custodian of wildlife in Madhya Pradesh, was on a tour, but he promptly swung into action. A few minutes before the midnight of 14 September, he emailed some of the state’s top tourism players, warning them of the PIL and urging them to join hands ‘to protect’ their interests.

Open has a copy of this tell-tale email sent out by Pabla. It reads:

‘This is to let you know that a PIL (WP no. 12352/2010 – Ajay Dube Vs NTCA and Others) has been filed in the high court of MP Jabalpur, which, among other things, seeks a ban on tourism in the core zones of tiger reserves. The applicant has also preyed (sic) for an iimmediate (sic) stay. Although the government of MP will oppose this application, lodge owners, travel operators, guides etc may also like to implead themselves as affected parties if you want to be sure that this PIL doesn’t succeed. As the case may have serious consequences for you people, kindly take whatever steps you think will be appropriate to protect your interests. As I am travelling and do not have the mail IDs of all of you, kindly inform others who will be affected by this case.’

Not surprising, then, that when the PIL subsequently came up for court hearing last week, around a dozen interventions were submitted. Among the interveners were a slew of hotel associations from Bandhavgarh, Kanha and Pench, and a few NGOs.

While the NTCA told the court that core critical forest areas were “required to be kept as inviolate for the purpose of tiger conservation, without affecting the rights of Scheduled Tribes or such forest dwellers”, in his reply, Pabla claimed that he (as chief wildlife warden) was the supreme authority on such decisions in the state, and that tourism aided the protection of forests and wildlife. The next hearing is scheduled on 6 December.

Meanwhile, in Rajasthan, there are some questions best answered by Principal Chief Conservator of Forests RN Mehrotra, the man who orchestrated the controversial tiger reintroduction programme that suffered its first casualty last week, when a male tiger was poisoned to death. Busy relocating a few villages in order to secure an ‘inviolate tiger habitat’ in Sariska, Mehrotra must have had his hands full. But the boss of the state forest establishment has still got time for a new, and secret, pet project.

For many decades, the medieval fort of Kankwari, where Aurangzeb is said to have imprisoned his brother Dara Shikoh, lay in ruins deep inside the Sariska reserve. Today, while hundreds of families are being moved out of Kankwari village, the fort atop a hillock a few hundred yards away is getting a silent makeover.

Forest officers in the field are tight-lipped, and Mehrotra has not replied to queries, but state Chief Wildlife Warden HM Bhatia admits that the renovation was funded by the state tourism department. “Our policy is to promote eco-tourism,” he explains, “We do not allow people to stay inside forests, but we will work out an arrangement keeping the safety of tourists and the security of wild animals in mind.”

In New Delhi, NTCA officials say they are not aware of any renovation or eco-tourism proposal at Kankwari, adding that any non-forest activity would need official clearances from several central authorities. Says former Rajasthan PCCF BD Sharma: “If the tourism department has funded the renovation, the purpose is obvious. But eco-tourism cannot happen inside core areas. Whether they make it a day or night facility, how will they justify the disturbance, especially after removing an entire village from that area?”

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THE PROPOSAL to ban tourism in critical tiger forests was not an idea chanced upon by a bureaucrat in a eureka moment. It has been a legal necessity since the 2006 amendment to the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, that requires all critical tiger habitats to be ‘inviolate’—out of bounds for human use. As a result, more than 50,000 forest dwelling families have been earmarked for rehabilitation, and many thousands have already been moved out.

To many, it does not make any moral sense to have lodges and resorts inside a forest where villages have been uprooted to facilitate conservation. Ashish Kothari, member of several government panels and a champion of forest dwellers’ rights, feels such hypocrisy that allows speeding safari cars and plush tourist facilities in national parks after forcibly evicting local villagers only results in loss of popular support for conservation.

But when Dr Rajesh Gopal, member-secretary of the NTCA, accepted that government policies had no room for double standards, the tourism lobby went up in arms. Ironically, most conservationists who have always been quite vocal in demanding the eviction of villages from core forests have somehow preferred to maintain a diplomatic silence this time round. Not surprising, because most of them either run businesses or have made serious investments in high-profile reserves across the country.

Soon, Environment & Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh stepped in to issue a statement that the Ministry never had any plan to ban tourism, but it would be strictly regulated in the 39 Project Tiger reserves, particularly in designated core areas. He also said that the Ministry was working on detailed guidelines for promoting eco-tourism in line with the carrying capacity of individual reserves.

Far from clearing the picture, this has triggered fresh speculation about the nature and extent of ‘strict regulations’. So even as the Ministry works on the promised guidelines, some industry bigwigs and conservation heavyweights are busy finding ways to influence these clauses.

In public, the tourism lobby has been arguing its case on what it calls four crucial spin-offs for conservation. First, tourism brings in money and can make our cash-starved reserves financially self-sufficient. Second, wildlife tourism creates awareness and builds a stronger constituency for conservation. Third, the presence of tourists keeps a forest safe from poachers and other intruders, as evident from the relative abundance of animals and trees in tourism zones in any forest. Fourth, tourism absorbs local workers and reduces their dependence on forests for livelihood.

Forest officials promptly counter these arguments. They point out that the forests are not leased out to private managements in India, and anyway, the Centre has increased the budget manifold in the past five years. While accepting that tourists do amount to extra pairs of vigilant eyes, they add that all tourism zones already had a hearty abundance of animals before they were designated as such, and, in fact, successful conservation efforts behind such abundance were the reason these areas were earmarked as tourism zones in the first place.

Samir Sinha, a senior forest officer now with Traffic-India, wants the wildlife tourism sector to put its money where its mouth is. “On paper, wildlife tourism creates mass awareness for conservation and financially empowers the local workforce. What we have on the ground are mostly tourists who casually litter our forests and bribe guides to chase wild animals. Most resorts hire locals for menial jobs and pay a pittance,” he rues.

Dr Gopal points out how tourism has become brazenly intrusive: “Isn’t the result (of irresponsible tourism) there for everyone to see? They surround animals with vehicles, build resorts blocking wildlife corridors, dump garbage in eco-sensitive areas, and even exploit local villagers. Even the Tourism Ministry accepted such issues in a recent report. Nobody is against tourism, but they must act as responsible stakeholders.”

Many in the wildlife tourism sector, on the other hand, wag fingers at the dictatorial, corrupt and vindictive ways of the forest department. In most upscale reserves, last-minute permits and reservations are available at an extra cost. In Ranthambore, for example, hotels could get away with almost anything if they obliged forest officers by hosting their private functions or offering jobs to their relatives. In Corbett, if a hotel-owner pointed out instances of illegal tree-felling, he would be singled out and his safari permits would get squeezed. The list of such backroom manoeuvres is long.

A senior officer in the Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF), in fact, accepts that a section of forest officers are against the so-called proposal for a blanket ban on tourism in critical tiger habitats as it would affect their earnings. Now, he adds, these officers should be happy, as stricter regulations would offer better avenues for “milking” tourism.

+++

THIS TRADING of charges blurs the larger picture. And that picture is scary. Each upscale tiger reserve has its ‘carrying capacity’ (maximum number of tourists it can accommodate in a day) worked out. Compare that figure with the annual occupancy count in the hotels around that reserve. Depending on a reserve’s profile, the occupancy will be 30–100 per cent higher than the maximum number of people who can enter the forest for a safari.

Unfortunately, exact occupancy figures are not available simply because nobody is keeping a tab. But take Corbett, for example. Even in the peak season with all tourism zones in operation, the reserve cannot accommodate more than 700 tourists on safari a day. The hotel occupancy ought to be significantly less if you factor in day visitors (who do not stay overnight) and tourists who go on both morning and evening safaris.

There are about 100 small and big hotels around Corbett. At a conservative average of 30 double-bed rooms per property, that amounts to 3,000 double-bed rooms or 6,000 tourists a day. At an average high-season occupancy of 25 per cent, it translates to 1,500 tourists a day—more than double the number that can enter the reserve.

On a yearly scale, the mismatch looks more ominous. Factoring in the monsoon closure, a maximum of 190,000 tourists can enter Corbett in a year. In 2008-09, actual entries were recorded at about 180,000. But non-wildlife tourists visit Corbett round the year. Based on our previous assessment, a more modest average occupancy of 20 per cent adds up to 220,000 double-rooms a year or more than 400,000 tourists.

Clearly, hundreds of thousands of tourists, who apparently have no interest in forests or wildlife and do not even bother to visit the reserve, crowd around our forests regularly. Some come for extended sessions of corporate unwinding, others for rowdy weddings. More and more multi-star hotels come up behind high walls to accommodate them and choke forest corridors. These throngs, almost entirely with no motive other than leisure, end up raising levels of sound and light pollution with their late-night parties, draining vital resources like water, and leaving behind tonnes of garbage. Whether tourism is banned or regulated inside core forests, this monstrous non-wildlife crowd will continue to swell beyond the jurisdiction of the forest department, unless other agencies of the Government step in to staunch the flow.

Hotels within a stipulated distance from a forest should be allowed only if they maintain a generous open land to built-up area ratio. Any use of water and electricity by a hotel, above a reasonable quota specified according to its land size, should be steeply charged. A strict no-sound-no-light policy should be enforced in the late evenings, and a steep garbage tax levied with a carry-it-back policy. Once non-eco establishments transfer this substantial extra cost to non-wildlife tourists and refuse to offer them DJs by the pool, this crowd will gradually shift their corporate junkets and marriages away from forests.

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WHAT ABOUT the other bulk of tourists who insist on entering forests for wildlife safaris but are usually in picnic mode? Is it not the responsibility of hoteliers and tour operators to ensure that their clients follow rules, learn to respect the wilderness and possibly go back better educated?

Unfortunately, just about no one follows even the basics of the existing MoEF guidelines dating back to 2003. For example, the minimum mandatory distance between two safari vehicles should be 500 metres. At all times, a tourist vehicle or safari elephant should maintain a minimum distance of 30 metres from a wild animal. The photographs on these pages tell the real story.

While a number of players blame such irresponsible tourism for hurting the reputation of this sector, there is little effort to form a self-regulatory body to enforce strict industry norms. Instead, some pass the buck to forest staff, blaming them for turning a blind eye to such unruly tourists just because they come from ‘friendly’ hotels or tour operators. Others shrug, saying that “the good guys are just too few to control the bad ones”.

The result is one big mess. Travel Operators for Tigers, a campaign for responsible use of wild habitats in India, sums up the malaise by observing that wildlife tourism often suffers from badly motivated tourists, poorly informed guides, apathy towards local communities, excessive tiger-centricism, and vexed relations with park officials.

So, even the strictest of regulations will remain vulnerable to manipulation, unless the new guidelines institutionalise some transparency. There are a few pioneering eco-tourism projects that stand out in forests otherwise overrun by the rent-a-tiger tourism mafia. These rare green efforts may soon be forced out of business if the profit-spinning mafia continues to buy its way and forest officers get away with bending rules.

Says PK Sen, former director, Project Tiger: “The new set of guidelines should be made binding through legislation, with provisions for strict punishment for violation. However, its implementation will still depend on individual states. Legally, a shift from the core to the buffer areas is inevitable. We may not have too many good buffer forests today, but if the tourism lobby really means well, it can use its clout and money to encourage community conservation efforts around critical tiger forests. It will help both conservation and tourism.”

Implemented fairly, no pro-conservation regulation may hit the wildlife tourism sector too hard. The few who already have their eco-advantage will find it easier to cope, because, as conservationist Bittu Sahgal points out, it is high time “we offered real nature experiences and not expect tourists to just gawk at the tiger and pay for the privilege”.

Successful eco-tourism businesses can inspire a paradigm shift. As for outsized luxury properties, there is no reason why they should mind investing in buffer conservation so that the big animals begin to show up there. The rest, who have made crores by exploiting the Government’s investment in conservation and vulnerability of officials to corruption, might also continue to do well in whichever sector they switch to.


The author is an independent journalist

Debating media ethics? Go, get a life

With internet abuzz with unusual tapes and mainstream media silently closing ranks, it is very much business as usual

The Bengal Post / The Hoot, 25 November, 2010

Media is all about rights. So when it wrongly feels wronged, two wrongs give it the right to censor news. Pity, no one can blackout what is, literally, in the air. So a total ban in the mainstream media notwithstanding, many of you have read the transcripts and heard the tapes of the telephonic conversations of a professional lobbyist with a few renowned “journalists” on the internet.

Among the bigwigs heard are two almost iconic faces -- a columnist better known for his discerning palate and an anchor for her opulent screen energy. Soon after the tapes became public, both expressed shock at how some vested interests were trying to hear too much in what were routine, polite parleys with a news source.

Since none of them dismissed the tapes as fabricated, I thought it gave lesser mortals in the media fraternity an opportunity to learn the fine art of chatting up a source from their two very successful colleagues. So when a student of journalism asked me what to make out of the tapes and the subsequent clarifications, I told her she should not hesitate meeting the two media icons asking for a job once she got her degree. But she had an immediate concern. Working on a course essay on ethical reporting, she wanted to score a point by touching upon the tape issue. Shameless, I saw an opportunity.

If she was keen to scoop a government decision, say, on a few mining bids, I told her, she must do whatever it took to be in the loop. No matter if it required helping the mining lobby influence a few bureaucrats or a minister or taking an underhand offer from them to the industry, but she had to be always on top of the story.

But, the bright little thing asked, did it not make a bigger story that both sides were engaged in dubious bargaining on an issue that was supposed to be decided on objective merit? Hell, that was not her story, I told her, and that was not ethical either. She must stay with her story, whatever the temptation, and facilitate it along the way so that when a much-bargained decision was arrived at, she became the first person to scoop, well, only the decision. Was not that the story she had set out to do?

The expression on the young student’s face told me she was not convinced. I blamed my presumably limited communication skills. Why, the energetic anchor stated pretty much the same in her defense and I am sure she would not have done so unless she expected the world to understand and appreciate the point. Surely, allocation of cabinet portfolios was the news, not the dirty arm-twisting or compromises made behind it. She could not have been insulting her viewers’ intelligence; come on, not again.

A little disappointed with myself, I decided to have another go. If she ever gets important enough, I told the student, and gets to write columns to influence, I meant, guide her readers, she should learn to both retain and lose her humility.

Noticing her quizzical expression, I quickly explained that she should always be open to education and should always hardsell the reach and impact of her columns so that people find her worth educating. Come on, game changers are expected only to write on everything, not know everything. Besides, from Confucius to Dalai Lama, all wise men seek a teacher in everyone they meet. So every source matters, however dubious. She should listen to each and, as part of her learning, take a few dictations every now and then.

Almost excited, she said she always thought it was a great idea to put all viewpoints in a piece. How she broke my heart. I sternly told her that she would never make the cut if she did not learn to master the authority to choose which viewpoint to present. It was all in public interest, I went on to explain, and it was her duty to tell readers or viewers what is right. One could not make it big by shunning big responsibilities, even if that meant scripting and rehearsing an interview to make it appear, what else, right.

Midway through this conversation, a baby-faced friend of hers had joined us. Watching her leaning against the table with a frozen smile, I really did not see it coming. The moment I paused, she let go.

Picking her words with care, she told me that she could shove those tips you-know-where and that she was in fact quietly listening so far just to figure out what an old you-know-what like me (that was alright since she could not have been more than 22) thought about those two. Before I could protest, she dismissed one of those two as India’s most self-important foodie who made little impact and less sense, and the other as the Tulsi of English news TV minus the jewellery.

As I stared bemused, she fired away. When did those two last do any reporting, the true test of a journalist? Not columns or reviews or chat shows or breast-beating at disaster zones but hard news reporting?

But then, I pointed out, that even abroad, most star reporters, Pulitzer and Emmy winners, usually got promoted to appear as presenters in big reporting shows (like 60 Minutes on CBS) that were in fact researched and scripted by their producers who were fine journalists themselves. She sized me up with a cold look. Could I please point out one 'Pulitzer-type' story done by either of those two?

I would have really broken in a sweat but she relented with a smile, offering to make my task easier. Could I think up any news worth its headline that those two ever unearthed (she chewed the word to emphasize), news that nobody knew till exposed?

Then, her smile broadening, she abruptly left with her slightly embarrassed friend, admonishing her within my earshot: “I know your media types. There was no point debating if those two flouted any journalistic ethics. Get a life!”

Oh, yes? I sat there, slowly finishing my coffee already gone cold. Maybe there was no point fretting over the stance of the mainstream media either.

Tell you, these kids are not funny.

Author is an independent journalist

Dispatched to Die

The latest death of a translocated tiger reiterates how Sariska continues to stand for everything that could have gone wrong with conservation in India

Open magazine, 19 November, 2010

What do you do when you cannot save the tigers in your custody? In Rajasthan, you blame the tiger. So when the rotten carcass of the first of five tigers translocated to repopulate Sariska was found this Sunday, the officials were quick to explain the death as a result of infighting.

Five tigers – two males and three females – were shifted to Sariska between June 2008 and July 2010. Even before a post mortem was conducted on male ST1’s carcass, forest bosses told the media that he was killed by the other male ST4 who has been missing for a couple of weeks now. They knew that the decomposed body would not have revealed much.

However, the skin on the dead tiger was intact and it showed no scar indicative of any fight. There was no sign of any struggle on ground. Sources in the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) pointed out that the death was caused by poisoning. But they would not go on record refuting the claims of their Rajasthan counterparts.

“There was no indication of any fight at all. Though the decomposed visceral organs may not give out any trace of poison, what else could have killed a healthy tiger in its prime? Remember the carcass was found close to a village at the edge of the reserve,” says an official on condition of anonymity. Indeed, it was not difficult to poison a kill since both male tigers of Sariska were frequently preying on cattle.

Two days after the carcass was found, Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh rushed to the field after NTCA chief Dr Rajesh Gopal briefed the minister about the circumstantial evidences of poisoning. With their infighting theory tottering, the state forest bosses are now trying to find new excuses, blaming the death on tuberculosis or a snake bite.

While the authorities may yet not succeed in hushing up the poisoning, what irks a number of conservationists is the total lack of professionalism and transparency. They point out that the joint monitoring teams of WII and state forest department are supposed to have daily records of land use and prey habits of the five translocated tigers and a death cannot go unexplained.

“If there was no sign of a fight, the viscera should have been sent to an advanced forensic lab to establish if the tiger was poisoned. It was clearly not poaching for skin. Either some locals were avenging regular loss of cattle or some vested interest instigated them to take out tigers. In either case, it’s a failure of management and monitoring science and needs to be investigated by an independent agency,” says PK Sen, former director, Project Tiger.

To many, it was a disaster waiting to happen. The tiger has long become a pawn in an open gamble of power and money in the state. What is worse, some of India’s top sarkari wildlife scientists have reduced themselves to rubber stamps to give this sacrificial game the sanctity of scientific conservation.

As early as 2005, soon after Sariska had lost all its tigers, an empowered committee set up by the Rajasthan government identified the factors responsible for the local extinction and mandated that any attempt to reintroduce tigers without securing the reserve would put future populations at risk.

The state administration slept over the recommendations for almost three years and yet managed to secure the Union ministry’s nod, cleared by an office no less powerful than the prime minister’s, to launch a tiger reintroduction programme.

So with villages still dotting the core area, pilgrims bound for Pandupol temple moving unhindered inside the forest and heavy traffic speeding along state highways SH13 and SH29A across the reserve, Sariska was declared ready to host tigers again. In a tearing hurry, a WII team flew in the first tiger from Ranthambhore in June 2008. After all, the state elections were due in a few months, tourism needed an urgent revival, and a top official in the union ministry fancied a historical photo-op as her farewell gift.

Two tigresses followed shortly but months into regular mating, there were no cubs to celebrate. It soon turned out that the tigers – sent without any checks for breeding compatibility -- were siblings, fathered by one male from two tigresses. Even if their mating had led to an offspring, it would have posed the risk of inheriting the recessive gene, crippling the founder population.

So in 2009, the reintroduction drive was put on hold for more than a year and a thorough DNA study ordered. But when the fourth tiger was to be picked up from Ranthambhore, based on the DNA report, the officials inexplicably decided to overlook other crucial criteria. A Union ministry guideline clearly stated that only young transient tigers could be selected for translocation. But this time, they shifted a mature male tiger, which had already marked its territory in Ranthambhore and impregnated a tigress.

This compromised the chances of the male settling down in its new habitat – all resident animals when uprooted try to home back to their erstwhile territory. It also spelt doom for the tiger’s cubs in Ranthambhore. In his absence, any other male tiger seeking to mate with the tigress would first kill the cubs to establish its own bloodline.

Months after the release, the male ST4 still remained restless and has been missing for the last three weeks. He was “lost” on a few occasions earlier as his radio collar stopped sending satellite data within days of his arrival in Sariska. Then the back-up VHF signals that are supposed to be available to handheld antennas within a 3 km range weakened to just a 1-km radius. Meanwhile, the cubs he fathered in Ranthambhore have been spotted only once since the reserve opened after the monsoon.

Last week, busy looking for male ST4, the WII monitoring team forgot about ST1. So nobody was alerted even though the tiger sent death signals (stationary) for 3 days. The village Kala Khet where the carcass was found lies close to the medieval fort of Kankwari in Sariska’s core where major renovation work is going on. Kankwari and Kala Khet both have permanent forest posts. Even without a radio collar, the dead tiger should have been traced much earlier had the forest guards followed the rigours of regular foot patrolling.

In fact, the reintroduction drive in Sariska started under Rajesh Gupta, an able officer who was specially brought in from Bharatpur for the purpose. Within months, the staff revolted against his tough work ethics and he was shunted out. From that point, the management continued to slide as top posts either remained unoccupied or were filled up with officers least interested in field work. The present director K K Garg runs Sariska from his Alwar office 30 km away and many old-timers who were suspended after the 2004 debacle are back on duty.

But such anomalies are not unusual in a state that refuses to budge even after the union ministry repeatedly urges its chief minister to stop mining around Sariska. As the tug-of-war continues, the number of mines inexplicably doubles up from 32 to 68.

So much under the media spotlight, the continuing mess at Sariska has been the most arrogant statement of the establishment that it just could not care less. Six years back when the reserve became a death trap, the authorities suspended a few staff but did precious little to secure the ground. The response appears to be the same this time as they continue to be in denial mode. It may not be too late yet for all to learn some lessons from history. Otherwise, it has a tendency to repeat itself.

The author is an independent journalist

A power statement we should be ashamed of

Ramesh must review sending elephants to Turkmenistan; we must rethink why so many animals and birds locked up in zoos

The Bengal Post, 11 November, 2010

The 2010 vision statement of the Central Zoo Authority says that zoos “will have healthy animals in eco-system based naturalistic enclosures, supportive to in-situ conservation with competent and contented staff, good educational and interpretive facilities, support of the people and be self-sufficient."

I do not know how many zoos in India fit that description. But Turkmenistan’s Ashbagat zoo surely does not. The authorities have revamped the zoo last month but the past experience was appalling. From what I have read about this facility, the management seemed to have little regard for the wellbeing of its animals. The enclosures had tin roofs in a temperature range of 46 to -5 degree celcius. The cages were almost never cleaned. Population monitoring was considered a luxury.

Not a place you would fancy visiting after a good meal. But your government, responding to a diplomatic request, has agreed to send two elephants to this desert. Since gifting wild animals is no more legal, the jumbos will be sent under an exchange programme.

Since elephants have been designated as national heritage animal, one would have thought their welfare would figure above petty diplomatic interests. Not too long back in 2005, the government eventually dumped a similar proposal to send an elephant to Armenia’s Yerevan zoo, infamous for its high elephant mortality. Then we sent two young elephants from Jaldapara to Japan’s Okinawa zoo in 2007. Three years on, the duo remains chronically depressed and difficult to control (read frequently tortured).

But these precedents seemed to have taught us nothing. If lack of understanding of the issue prompted Jairam Ramesh to sentence two elephants to a lifetime of misery, he still has time for a rethink. After all, he supported the proposed Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare, an initiative at the United Nations, earlier this year.

Of course, the conditions of most zoos at home are not any better. Since 1992, the CZA has evaluated 347 zoos, out of which 164 have been recognized and 183 refused recognition. Out of these 183, 92 have been closed down and their animals relocated suitably. The future of the remaining 91 derecognized zoos is currently under review. So far, only 34 zoos have their master plans approved by the CZA.

That brings us to the larger question: do we really need zoos? Yes, distressed animals deserve some dignity and a home. Also, captive breeding programmes may offer certain species a second, however thin, chance. But, surely, the thousands and lakhs of creatures confined in zoos world over are not all rescued specimens nor are they there to facilitate some breeding opportunity or other. For example, why on earth India should have more than 36,000 animals and birds in zoos?

Perhaps, Professor Randy Malamud was correct in his bold Reading Zoos: “What people see inside the zoo cage is a symbol of our power to capture and control other aspects of the world. They see what was once a marvellous, vibrant, sentient creature, full of instincts and emotions and passions and life force, reduced to a spectacle, a prisoner, a trophy of our conquest of the natural world. They see a celebration of the human power to displace and reconfigure an animal’s life for our own amusement and supposed edification.”

If that appears too strong an opinion, sample some amazing data from Craig Redmond of Captive Animals’ Protection Society. Take elephants, for example. A government-funded study by Bristol University scientists in 2008 looked at all 77 elephants in UK zoos, concluding ‘there was a welfare problem for every elephant’. They spent 83% of their time indoors and 54% of them showed repeated obsessive performance of apparently purposeless activity. So prevalent are degenerative foot and leg problems in captive elephants, caused in part by hard flooring and the inability to walk far, that only 16% of them could even walk normally.

Redmond punctured the myth that animals in zoos live longer than their wild counterparts. Some 40% of lion cubs in zoos die before one month of age – in the wild only 30% of cubs are thought to die before they are six months old and at least a third of those deaths are due to factors which are absent in zoos, like predation. Elephants in the wild live up to three times longer than those in zoos; even those born in logging camps have lower mortality rates.

Redmond also pointed out how many conservation scientists criticised captive breeding as a diversion from the reasons for a species’ decline. As one paper in Conservation Biology put it, captive breeding programmes give ‘a false impression that a species is safe so that destruction of habitat and wild populations can proceed’.

What about education, though? David Hancocks, a zoo veteran who worked across continents, dismissed the idea: “If zoos were as effective as they claim to be, surely after so many millions of visits by so many millions of children over so many decades we would have a society that was very knowledgeable of, concerned about and enthusiastically supportive of wildlife conservation. I strongly suspect that much of what is learned at the zoo, especially subconsciously, is in fact detrimental to the development of supportive and considerate attitudes towards wild habitat conservation.”

But do not we at least get to see species that we would never have otherwise? Malamud has a completely different take on this: “What’s most amazing about, say, a giraffe or a panda, is that a person like me who lives in Georgia, is not supposed to see these animals. They just don’t belong here. Making these fascinating creatures so easily available greatly diminishes their real beauty, their authentic existence. Secondly, zoos teach us that habitat, environment or ecosystem is not very important. Why bother trying to protect the environment when we can just scoop up all the interesting animals who live in it and put them on display? Naturalistic education should, on the contrary, teach us in the strongest possible terms that our awareness of living beings must be inextricably connected with their contexts, their life-spaces.”

I have been to better zoos and met rare dedicated managers. But I have been to many more zoos that made me cringe and puke. So I dare agree with Redmond that zoos infringe on the basic needs of animals in order to benefit the secondary desires (amusement or enlightenment) of humans.

Those who cannot imagine a world without zoos, rest assured. Zoos are not going to disappear overnight. But please do not forget to petition the friendly minister against shifting those jumbos to Ashbagat, and slip in a line or two demanding radical zoo reforms. The American Heritage Dictionary may define the word zoo as “a place or situation marked by rampant confusion or disorder” but let us all agree that animals deserve a choice outside frying pans or fire.

Caring To Death

Animal welfare is not conservation. That is why our emotional meddling, however well intentioned, poses a menace to wildlife

OPEN magazine, 30 October, 2010

The latest tragedy from Ranthambore, the death of a three-and-a-half-year-old male tiger, did not make big headlines. After all, the death was the result of infighting: male tigers often engage in mortal territorial battles. So the forest department decreed that the T36 male died a natural death.

Or did he?

The story goes back roughly two years. In September 2008, Ranthambore’s famed Guda tigress died of suspected poisoning, leaving two sub-adult cubs. The forest department dragged its feet over investigating the poisoning, but helped the cubs promptly, then about 16 months old. Since then, T36 male and his sister T37 have been enjoying routine baits handed out by well-meaning officials.

Raised on calves left for them, the brother-sister duo possibly lost or did not get to acquire the skills needed to survive in the wild on their own. The sister has a better chance, since females seldom face deadly challenges from other females. The brother’s luck ran out when he walked into a probing male last week. The adversary was just three years old. The natural advantage should have been with T36. But it was an unequal battle between a raised tiger and a wild one.

Once orphaned, 16-month-old T36 would have died of starvation. Or perhaps necessity would have made a wild tiger out of him. But by offering him baits, forest officials made his end an inevitability. Poor T36 was dead the day his ‘petting’ began in the wild.

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For generations inspired by the 1966 blockbuster based on Joy Adamson’s Born Free, the idea of ‘nursing’ wild animals, particularly big cats, in distress and ‘restoring’ them to the wild is still one of the loftiest goals of conservation.

So, across the country, old and injured tigers are being baited and treated, orphaned cubs are being brought up in ‘natural enclosures’ in different reserves. Not to mention the smug celebrations every time a man-eater is packed off to some zoo, instead of being shot dead.

But animal welfare is an ethical and not ecological concern. At best, these efforts have no bearing on wildlife conservation. At worst, they defeat its purpose.


In nature, the weak and the injured must perish so that the fittest may flourish. An aged tiger will die of starvation or at the claws of a young adversary. The reign of Charger, revered as the mightiest ever of all Bandhavgarh tigers, ended in a deadly fight with one of his grandsons in 2000. The forest staff tried to feed and treat the mauled, half-blind oldie in an enclosure, but Charger never recovered and died after a couple of months.

Had Charger survived thanks to human benevolence, his young grandson (B2) would have had to get into another fight to kill him, thereby inviting fresh injuries to himself and possibly jeopardising his own future as a dominant male.

Yet, we love to treat the wild like pets. The doomed T36 male was not the only victim in Ranthambore. Another brother-sister duo, orphaned when tigress Berdha died in April 2009, have been routinely fed by park officials since. This July, Simba, the three-year-old brother, seriously injured himself attempting a wild hunt. He was spotted in sorry shape during the monsoon, still suffering from deep wounds caused by porcupine quills. His fate remains uncertain.

Our heart bleeds for the young and old alike. Machli, the grand old matriarch of Ranthambore, has long lost her canines and cannot hunt anymore. So she is being fed with much fanfare. The park officials are also baiting her contemporary T2, a really aged male. In the same reserve, a young injured male (T24) was operated upon in April last year. It is another matter that Ranthambore’s tiger population shows a skewed sex ratio, with far too many males, and nature must eliminate a few to restore balance.

This August, over-protection led to the killing of three cubs from the first litter born since the high-profile experiment to re-populate Panna took off last year. An official report admits that while the father tried to approach the mother and cubs soon after they were born, the monitoring staff ‘did not allow such meetings’, essential for natural familiarisation through odour identification, etcetera.

Repeated fights broke out between the tiger and tigress when they were finally allowed to meet after four months. The father could not identify the cubs as his own, in all likelihood, and tried to kill them so that he could mate with the tigress again. Like any tigress, the mother resolutely defended her cubs, at the risk of injuries to herself, but could not save all of them. Conservationist Valmik Thapar recalls several instances of male tigers helping tigresses bring up cubs by sharing kills and so on. It is only when a father is ousted by another male that infanticide takes place, with the new male trying to kill his predecessor’s cubs—partly to establish his own bloodline and partly to free the tigress that refuses to mate while bringing up cubs. Since the father in question is the only male tiger now in Panna, Thapar finds it inexplicable why the authorities invited trouble by denying him access to his own cubs.

In neighbouring Bandhavgarh, another welfare drama is being played out in the wild. When the Jhurjhura tigress was killed in a shocking road accident this May, the future of her three small cubs in the wild was sealed. Soon enough, one of the cubs was killed by a male. Still, the other two cubs are being raised in an enclosure at the heart of the reserve, affecting natural use of the habitat.

In Bandhavgarh again, an injured Sidhbaba female has been struggling to raise her two cubs. Given her limp, she rarely hunts wild prey, making do with occasional village cattle. Whenever she fails to make a kill, officials offer baits to keep the family alive.

The obvious downside is that Sidhbaba’s cubs are learning the tricks of the trade from their mother who only hunts cattle. The family might have died without regular feeds, but in the present scenario, the department, in effect, is raising the cubs to be cattle-lifters who will eventually run into major conflict with villagers, perhaps leading to their death or captivity.

Not too far, in Maharashtra’s Bor sanctuary, three orphaned Tadoba cubs are being hand-raised in an enclosure, and local NGOs want them released. Even if the three survive in the wild, it is sure to result in conflict.

Sceptics will remember how Billy Arjan Singh’s controversial experiment with hand-raised big cats led to conflict and the poisoning of two female leopards he named Harriet and Juliette.

Wildlife biologist Dr Dharmendra Khandal offers a recent example. Last year, when a hand-raised leopard, Lakshmi, was released on the outskirts of Ranthambore, the people-friendly cat ran after local villagers, spreading panic. Lakshmi is now confined to an enclosure deep inside the reserve, much to the annoyance of the wild cats of the area.

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Evidently, we love to play God, but to what end? Hand-raised cubs, for instance, have rarely succeeded in the wild. They lack hunting skills and fail to defend themselves. Also, bereft of any fear of humans, they tend to get into conflict all too often.

Captive females do stand a chance, since wild males accept them as mating partners. For a hand-raised lioness, such acceptance even compensates for her lack of hunting skills as she gets to feed with the pride. After rehabilitating Elsa the lioness, Adamson successfully

returned two more hand-raised cats to the wild. It’s no coincidence that Pippa the cheetah and Penny the leopard were also females.

In India, Billy Arjan Singh experimented with four hand-raised cats. Tigress Tara and leopardesses Harriet and Juliette had cubs in the wild, but the whereabouts of Prince, the male leopard, remained uncertain. More recently, in 1999, Gajendra Singh released two leopards near Bandipur. While the male was killed soon after, the female survived.

Male cubs or hand-raised male adults cannot survive challenges from other males. When Raja and Rani were orphaned after tigress Begum was poisoned in Palamau in the early 1990s, they were both about six months old. To bring up her cubs, Begum had moved to a 29 sq km forest compartment that was separated from the rest of the reserve by a railway track. After she was gone, the forest staff occasionally assisted the cubs with live baits, but never tried to handle them. However, it was the railway track that saved Raja from Palamau’s other males.

Almost a decade ago, an orphaned brother-sister pair of cubs was helped by live baiting in Ranthambore. The presence of the tiger that fathered them probably helped their survival.

But few are as lucky. The small cubs of the Jhurjhura tigress, the orphaned Bor cubs, the hand-raised Lakshmi of Ranthambore—none of them have a future outside captivity. But instead of taking them to zoos, to quote wildlife photographer Aditya Singh, we are deluding ourselves by bringing zoos to the forests.

This blinkered welfare motive works everywhere. For example, sending a ‘man-eater’ to a zoo does save its life, but, in terms of wildlife conservation, the effort is no better than shooting the animal dead. In both cases, the result is one animal less in the wild.

Our excitement about saving ‘man-eaters’ distracts us from the real problems—absence of buffer forests, faulty land use around forests, and so on—that push predators to chance encounters with people, thus creating ‘man-eaters’ in the first place. If these primary causes are not addressed and if we do not learn to differentiate between accidental and deliberate attacks, we may soon be left with empty forests, once we have happily ‘rescued’ all tigers by whisking away these ‘man-eaters’ to zoos.

It will certainly not harm the wild if we care a little less. Less enough to stop meddling—like those who proudly treated, in a rescue centre, a two-month-old rhino calf that was attacked by a Kaziranga tiger in 2007. Touching, but that left a captive baby, its estranged mother and a hungry predator. I do not know which one deserves our apology most.

Few news are good news for conservation

Last weekend seemed to have given green brigade hope but the brazenness of our political masters grounded it soon enough

The Bengal Post, 28 Oct, 2010

The week closed with good news and it came from the horse’s mouth. At a small gathering organized by tiger author Valmik Thapar last weekend, minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh shared the news that his government was about to double staff allowances across the board in all Project Tiger reserves. After approval from the Planning Commission, the Finance Ministry has cleared the file this month and formal announcement is due any day.

A major boost for the forest personnel who work under extremely tough conditions, this was the first piece of good news of the evening. A few minutes back, plan panel head Montek Singh Ahluwalia had inspired a few chuckles by earnestly pledging to “preserve” the tiger. Surely a slip of tongue but I distinctly heard a young lady in a smart black dress mutter behind my shoulder that she did not know they also taught the art of pickling tigers at the IMF kitchen.

So we all laughed when Ramesh asked his senior colleague (plan panel head is a Cabinet post) if he would commit Rs 5000 crore over seven to eight years for relocating 50,000 families from our forests. An assurance from Ahluwalia could have topped the other good news but his turbaned head ducked the bouncer. Nobody, however, seemed to mind: Rs 5000 crore appeared quite a lot of money to be bargained over at a public place.

Meanwhile, Ramesh was trying to score a few political points by branding the GDP-wallahs as a bigger threat than poachers. Between his lines, we could quickly read a range of names, from Kamal Nath to Shekhar Gupta. And much as I fault the green minister for double standards and media fetish, he sounded genuinely brave for a moment. But Ramesh changed his tone soon enough. Why not? His numerous fans love that angst of a martyr-to-be when he speaks these days.


Just when I thought the good news bulletin was over for the evening, Wildlife Trust of India veteran Ashok Kumar briskly waved at me. Yes, the West Bengal forest department had finally engaged WTI to find a solution to the problem of recurring elephant deaths on the railway tracks between Siliguri and Alipurduar, he told me with a confident smile.

Unlike some of his influential colleagues at WTI, Ashok-ji is usually candid with me. He told me that speeding might not be the real issue and that no overnight solution was expected. I learnt that his WTI team took about six months, through a trial-and-error process, to come up with effective recommendations that have stopped the killing of elephants on the railway tracks that cut through Rajaji national park to keep Dehradun connected to the rest of the country. Since a solution for north Bengal would naturally have to be site-specific, it could take as many months to figure out.

I travelled along that track -- from Malbazar to Alipurduar via Rajabhatkhawa -- during this Durga puja. It seemed that the idea of pinpointing a few parts of the corridor was futile as elephants could walk across the track almost anywhere along that stretch. If one wanted to limit speed, trains would have to ply slow throughout and Siliguri to Alipurduar would take double the time. It required more realistic solutions. Frankly, I did not think six months was too long a window if that was all it took a WTI team to find ways to stop or minimise the killings.

Reality struck soon enough after the closeted feel-good evening. Over the next two days, Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot ruled out revoking mining leases around Sariska and his Madhya Pradesh counterpart Shivraj Singh Chouhan refused to notify buffer zones for Panna.

These were simply amazing turns of events because these are the two reserves that had lost all tigers in the recent past, severely embarrassing the respective state governments. But few ground lessons seemed to have been learnt since, even after relevant laws have been amended with much thoughtfulness and the Supreme Court has issued several harsh judgments.

Busy finding legal loopholes to circumvent binding commitments, if the chief ministers were to deny the basic prerequisites of conservation, what was the point in launching high-profile repopulation drives by flying in tigers from other reserves for Sariska and Panna? Good publicity, perhaps?

What was more appalling was the way the chief ministers made their statements in public. Through an overdose of populist grandstanding, the message came out loud and clear: no question of tiger conservation at the cost of the people. Really? Even after the majority of villages concerned around Panna have already consented to buffer notification?

Did you say our chief ministers were playing in the hands of the mining mafia? Take a walk. Mines employ people and certainly all our leaders had in mind was the livelihood issue of such labourers.

Indeed, sanction for anything seems to come easy in India, "in public interest". That is why we can silently lose all tigers from national parks, fly a few in with much fanfare, and arrogantly decree that we do not mind losing them again.

What happens if you dare question public interest? The money-media-mandate troika will simply play the ultimate trump – an one-weapon-arsenal that enables the economy to plunder, the media to solicit, and the government to silence. So let forests be cleared for many more mines, factories, dams, highways, airports, anything in the name of “national interest”.

Preserve the tiger, indeed.

How they killed the poster cubs of Panna

Exposed: Monitoring team did not let the Panna father meet his cubs for 4 months since birth

Open Magazine, 15 September, 2010

With cubs from the only litter born to reintroduced tigers missing for three weeks now, authorities seem to be at a loss to explain the setback to the government’s high-profile drive to repopulate Sariska and Panna. One of the three missing cubs has apparently been traced, but even the authorities have given up hope for the other two following reports of repeated fights between their parents.

While Dr Rajesh Gopal, head of National Tiger Conservation Authority, went on record saying that “such conflicts are common among tigers leading to the death of newborn cubs”, Panna Field director SR Murthy found it “intriguing” that the lone Panna male tiger that fathered the cub got aggressive with the mother and the babies.

Official reports, however, reveal that the deaths are neither intriguing nor common. The conflict was the result of an inexplicable intervention, in violation of the basics of cat biology, by a joint team of state forest department and Wildlife Institute of India that monitors the three reintroduced big cats in Panna.

In his note sent to HS Pabla, Principle Chief Conservator of Forests, Madhya Pradesh, on September 13, field director Murthy admitted that while the father (T3) tried to approach the mother (T1) and the cubs soon after they were born, the monitoring staff “did not allow such meetings”, essential for natural familiarisation.

According to this report, the litter of four cubs was born on April 15/16. Shockingly, it took the monitoring team four months to get “technical and scientific opinions from all quarters and the project team of WII” before allowing the father to meet the tigress and the cubs on August 19.

Murthy reported repeated fights between T1 and T3 once they were allowed to meet. In all likelihood, the tiger could not identify the cubs as his own and tried to kill them so that he could mate with the tigress again. Like any tigress, T1 resolutely defended her cubs, at the risk of injuries to herself, but apparently could not save all of them.

Male tigers are instinctively protective about their cubs and there are several recorded instances of them helping the tigress bring up the babies by sharing kills etc. It is only when a father is ousted by another male that infanticide takes place with the new male trying to kill his predecessor’s cubs – partly to establish his own bloodline and also to free the tigress that refuses to mate while bringing up cubs.

Since T3 is the only male tiger in Panna, it is inexplicable why the authorities denied him access to his cubs. “Normal course of familiarisation would never have allowed such aggressive behaviour. Someone needs to explain how such a decision to keep the father away was taken under the nose of top forest officials and in the presence of experts from WII,” said tiger expert Valmik Thapar, who recorded, as far back as in the 1980s, how male tigers took care of their cubs in Ranthambhore.

The elusive tiger and too many loud, blind men

Pet theories are emotional, and generalizations naïve, but it is dangerous when these threaten the fate of a species little understood

Bengal Post, 1 September, 2010

Do I agree that all tigers in Sunderbans are maneaters? That was the angry question hurled at me over phone last evening by a wildlife enthusiast who runs an NGO in Kolkata. I was stumped. Could I answer such a question? Was not it like asking if (all) Indians are corrupt? Or (all) cricketers greedy?

When I pointed out my problem with the question, I was told, more angrily, that anyone who knew Sunderbans would agree that the tigers there were all maneaters. Did not I know how many hundreds were killed by tigers historically in this mangrove delta? Or that even the watchtowers were secured with tough fencing? Would I dare take a walk along one of those creeks?

I humbly pointed out that if we were to believe in anecdotal records, thousands of people had died of tiger attacks all over India in the past and such figures did not necessarily single out Sunderbans tigers for their maneating propensity. I added that if I found a dog confined behind a bolted door at a friend’s house, I would rather attribute the unusual move to the host’s concern for my safety than to the animal’s obvious ferocity. And I really might not walk the Sunderbans forests partially because I fear encountering a problem tiger disturbed by the practice of frequent capture-release and partially because mangroves do not offer a particularly pleasant walking experience.

At that point, the wildlife enthusiast hung up on me. But what triggered this angry call got me thinking. Dr Monirul Khan, a tiger expert from Bangladesh, was in Kolkata to attend a tiger meet last week and he was quoted in the media, saying he thought one out of every ten tigers in Sunderbans were maneaters. No, he did not furnish any proof. I expressed my reservations to such regressive fear-mongering and a mini-hell broke loose.

Even before I received this angry call, some friends from Kolakata pointed out Dr Khan’s “excellent credentials”, daring me to doubt his maneater theory. To be honest, all I knew about Dr Khan until last week was that he pioneered a model that used dogs to ward off tigers. The effort was documented by none less than a BBC crew. Not much has been heard of it since.


Then, I stumbled upon Dr Khan’s paper on the dog experiment. He said use of domestic dogs to ward off animals was not a new idea and gave three examples. His first example – driving wild boars into forests in some areas in the US – is not relevant since wild boars do not usually eat dogs. Then he mentioned how Jim Corbett’s dog Robin used to track leopards for him, and how trained dogs were used to locate individual tigers in the Russian Far East. So dogs can surely get you to a big cat. But what about getting away?

Dr Khan claimed dogs were trained to alert wood gatherers or honey hunters of tiger presence nearby and that the “success rate in distinguishing the tiger was 62 per cent”. If I were to trust my life on a dog, I would prefer him to be slightly more accurate. Moreover, how was this success rate determined? Well, “either immediately, by observing the animals or their signs, or the next day (to avoid the risk of encountering any tiger) by observing pugmarks or scat.” Next day, did he say? I guess wild animals were expected to be cooperative enough and not trample upon those sites till researchers returned 24 hours later.

But there is more. Dr Khan assumes that tigers prefer humans to dogs and this makes the dogs on duty safe. Again, by his own admission, tigers attack people in Sunderbans only when they enter the forest and not in villages. But there are records of tigers picking up village dogs. The last recorded instance in Sunderbans was in November last year when a dog was killed in Gosaba's Pirkhali village.

So, tigers do hunt dogs. Now if a dog barks inside a forest at the sight of a deer or a boar, there is a high probability of a tiger picking up the noise from half a kilometer away. So far from alerting people, the presence of a dog inside forests may actually attract predators and endanger people accompanying it.

On the maneating debate, let us assume that all Sunderbans tigers consider humans as food. A tiger makes roughly 50 kills a year to survive. Sunderbans’ 300 tigers would make at least 15,000 kills every year. If humans are part of the normal prey base for Sunderbans tigers, and since humans are easier to hunt, one would expect a sizable number of these 15,000 kills to be humans. Even at 10 per cent, we are looking at a human casualty figure of 1,500 per year. However, the total annual human death toll across Sunderbans barely ever touches 100. The figures just do not add up.

In fact, between 1984 and 2006, tigers killed 490 people in Bangladesh -- at an annual average of 21. In the same period, data shows that of all the Sunderbans tigers that killed people, about 50 per cent killed only one person each, implying these were accidental attacks. Still we go on making casual remarks on how the love for human flesh is getting embedded in the Sunderban tiger’s gene. No scientist will even dignify such claims with a response.

So, do I believe all tigers in Sunderbans are maneaters? Frankly, I do not know. These mangrove tigers do kill humans opportunistically. But very little ground research has been conducted in this hostile terrain for anyone to reach a conclusion yet. Fortunately, a few very able scientists are at work on both sides of the border and their findings will hopefully throw some light on the behaviour of these much-misunderstood tigers in the near future. Till then, we better hold on to our pet theories. Let’s not play blind men around a tiger.

Some Easy Steps To Kill Tigers

How does a tiger become a good candidate for a new breeding programme? Forget science and genetics. The first tiger spotted is the first tiger shipped out

TEHELKA, 22-28 August, 2010

Journalists who cover ‘sensitive’ sectors such as the Ministry of Defence or External Affairs are used to restricted access. These ministries often cite national interest to make it difficult to question some of the “stories” they dish out. One would not imagine the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to be so secretive. But the green ministry plays the same power game in protected forests off limits for the masses and the media.

No one would grudge the ministry its clout to quietly and quickly secure ecological interests in a squabbling, dithering democracy. But these secret machinations can be a dangerous game. Last month, one such move went horribly wrong, rubbishing credible science, betraying public trust and wasting crores of rupees in public money.

In a joint exercise, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the Rajasthan Forest Department and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) shifted a fourth tiger to Sariska on 20 July. There has been a 17-month moratorium since the last tiger was shifted in February 2009. The media was told that the delay was due to a thorough scientific exercise that was necessary to ascertain genetic compatibility after the first three tigers shifted to Sariska turned out to be siblings and also failed to breed. When the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) finally cleared two tigers for relocation after matching the DNA of the Ranthambore tigers with the ones shifted to Sariska, the officials claimed, the operation was resumed.

A triumph for science and conservation, the media was told. Well, almost. If only the officials shifted the right tigers, the ones cleared by the NCBS.

DNA analysis is done either from blood or scat (droppings) samples. WII scientists have been involved in a radiocollaring exercise in Ranthambore for more than three years. Though it is mandatory to collect blood when a tiger is tranquilised for radio-collaring, and they have collared many, no blood sample was sent to NCBS. So the DNA tests were done with scats and two samples were found suitable.

The next logical step was to find the two tigers whose scats were cleared. Since nobody saw any tiger defecating while collecting the samples, this was the tricky part. One collection point near Kamaldhar was frequented by five tigers — three males (T12, T28 and T38) and two females (T17 and T19). The other collection point was at the edge of the park, visited by a young male (T24) and also by T12.

The two females (T17 and T19) are known to be closely related to the females already in Sariska. So the officials knew that these DNA results would not come handy for identifying a suitable female and any selection would be random without further studies. For a male, they had four possibilities (T24, T12, T28 and T38) to check.

But within 48 hours of receiving the NCBS report, without even trying to ascertain which individual was actually cleared by the DNA test, the officials picked up the T12 male. Why? Because T12 had hunted a cow on 18 July and was the easiest target when the darting team arrived on 19 July.

It did not matter that T12 was six years old, had an established territory and was one of the four dominant males of Ranthambore. It did not matter that a 2008 NTCA directive prohibited shifting settled, territorial tigers and allowed relocation of young floaters still on the lookout for territories. It did not matter that a similar mature, settled tiger shifted from Pench to Panna started walking back home, risking its life and triggering panic among people. It did not matter that all the other three candidates were younger than T12 and two of them were floaters ideal for shifting.

On 28 July, days after shifting T12, officials sent a tigress to Sariska (T44) who was recently photographed while mating by many Ranthambore regulars. If she is indeed pregnant, her cubs will be doomed in Sariska in the absence of their father. So will be the cubs of the tigress that paired with T12 days before he was removed from Ranthambore.

ASOURCE IN WII revealed that the tiger reintroduction project was initially conceived as part of the ongoing WII research at Ranthambore. As the researchers kept collaring tigers, they were supposed to keep checking their blood samples for genetic compatibility and shift suitable candidates that met other criteria like age to Sariska as and when possible. Then, a sudden populist rush, he rued, hijacked the project.

But it is shocking that our officials would brazenly repeat the same mistakes that they were forced to own up to only recently. What was the point of the 17-month moratorium, sundry committees, repeated field surveys and DNA analyses if they were to again pick up whichever tiger they found easy to dart?

It may appear a fait accompli but the WII must make public how they identified the right tigers from the scat samples cleared by NCBS. The NTCA must spell out who is responsible for shifting resident and breeding tigers from the core population, violating its own guideline. The MoEF must send blood samples of the new Sariska tigers, collected in the presence of independent observers, to NCBS to confirm if the right individuals were selected.

Unfortunately, the only heads that ever roll in our forests belong to tigers.

The writer is an independent journalist and a filmmaker

All for immediate action, let’s also find the right direction

Mass awareness is good news for conservation but mass prescription is not because science has no room for opinions or anecdotes

Bengal Post, 25 August, 2010

In a country where most people have an argument on most things, the list of subjects immune to opinion mongering is getting shorter by the day. Where even rather complex issues like the nuclear deal or the Kashmir problem are frequently “settled” on socialist cafes and social networking sites, little wonder the conservation broth has also found too many cooks eager to stir.

Granted, no amount of awareness is enough for the cause of biodiversity protection. But activism has a tendency to go on auto pilot. In conservation, such chances are twice stronger. It is not difficult to see why.

Wildlife biology is complex science, but not rocket science. A lay person understands little of both. But because he has never ventured to the space, he may not dare suggest how best to design a PSLV. However, a few forest safaris surprisingly qualify him to have his say on how best to fix the country’s conservation mess.

If you dare question these opinionated tourists, they are likely to stump you by quoting some “expert” or the other. Frighteningly, almost none of India’s popular green icons ever had anything do with wildlife or conservation sciences. Some of them are glorified wildlife tourists themselves; some others’ ex officio expertise materialised while holding key positions with the government or big NGOs. Only under such tutelage, the tradition of quick-fix activism could have flourished.

Over the last week, I have had three experiences that have left me a little shaken. First, I heard from Kolkata how wildlife activists hailed the state government’s decision to release 24 captive-bred spotted deer in Sunderbans so that tigers did not “drift into human settlements” looking for food.

Then, a message from the heartland of the country told me how the green community, outraged by a decision of Andhra Pradesh forest department to cull wild boars, were looking for foolproof methods, like electric fencing, to stop crop raiding.

Finally, I read how one of the most able and dedicated forest officer in Rajasthan was mauled by a “straying” Ranthambhore tiger because the department did not care to ensure safety measures necessary for tranquilisation.

These cases immediately triggered frenetic parleys on social networking sites, blogs and media headlines, but the fundamentals were lost in each instance. To understand how, let us ask a simple question: why man-animal conflict? The simple answer: either over security or food.

Animals attack in self-defence when surprised or confronted by people (who panic at the sight of animals). This can happen either when people enter forests or when animals move close to habitations looking for crops or cattle (food). While such attacks – goring by a boar or mauling by a tiger -- can sometimes be blamed on people trespassing inside forests, conflict over security is usually accidental.

But ungulates do not target crops – or carnivores seek out cattle -- accidentally. So why do animals go after non-forest food? Either because there is insufficient food in forests or non-forest food seems more attractive.

Assume the first scenario when animals are raiding crops or cattle because there is little food inside forests. If we stop their access to such non-forest food by electric fences etc, what will we achieve so different from culling? No food inside forest and no access to food outside will eventually bring down the population. If we are fine with death by starvation, what is the fuss over culling?

Moreover, it is very difficult to keep animals away with contraptions like electric fencing. If used locally, it diverts animals to the next village. If used extensively, it creates a fenced in natural zoo -- not exactly what conservation parameters demand.

Thankfully, it is not any forest famine but a better buffet outside that draws animals more often to foray close to human habitations. A cow is an easier hunt than a blue bull. Foraging in forests cannot offer tastier and more nutrient alternatives like sugarcane or maize.

The only solution to reduce such conflict is to reduce the availability of attractive food options. This requires change in land use and creation of a buffer zone so that crops do not stand, or cattle graze, at the edge of the forest. Promotion of non-edible crops also helps. Such measures will minimise but still not stop conflict. A few stray cases will still have to be taken care of by effective compensation schemes.

So where do these basics put the three cases mentioned above?

First, when we release 24 (or 240) deer in Sunderbans, where 400-plus cattle are available per square kilometer, and expect tigers to “stray” less frequently, even the big cats may not find it easy to maintain a straight face.

The move is clearly to dump surplus animals in Sunderbans in the garb of a conservation effort after failing to manage deer populations in captivity. The next lot of deer will come from squalid zoos and invariably carry tuberculosis infection. I do not know how many of these captive-bred cheetals will actually be taken by tigers, but bereft of any fear of humans, they will surely boost Sunderbans’ flourishing bush meat trade.

Second, if culling orders in certain states have shocked us, we better take a deep look within. Starving may not necessarily be a less clumsy solution than culling. Besides, we routinely tweak the natural order by mindlessly creating water holes etc to “help” animals and artificially boost numbers. The weak and infirm are supposed to die during the summer to maintain a naturally sustainable population. Animal welfare and wildlife conservation are two different things and we will be naïve to forget that.

Third, when we keep harping on why a Ranthambhore ranger was made to attempt darting without adequate safety, do we mean it would have been just fine if the tiger was wrapped up in a cage without any blood spilled anywhere? Or do we ask why one should at all consider tranquilising a tiger for killing a cow at the edge of the forest?

Do we ask why Ranthambhore animals still do not have some breathing space in an effective buffer? Or why an effective compensation scheme is not in place to take the villagers into confidence? Or why the forest department, the police and NGOs could not develop a system over so many years to manage angry mobs during such eventualities?

We either do not care to understand about the scientific imperatives of conservation or are wary of the challenges of implementing those basics on ground. For example, it is indeed not easy controlling mobs during a crisis. But look at Jammu and Kashmir, one of worst conflict affected states. Have we taken note of the state forest department’s initiative to engage local youth in Primary Reaction Teams (PRTs) in 150 villages to ensure that emotions do not boil over?

Instead, we are just content echoing the stereotype and hear ourselves echoed. “And I am you and what I see is me”…Pink Floyd would not be amused.

By Marx or maa, it's all about mati and manush

We do not have much of a political choice when it comes to defending whatever little remains of the wilderness

Bengal Post, 5 August, 2010

Not many remember that Karl Marx’s experience of defending the peasant's rights to gather dead wood made him shift from pure politics to economics and then to socialism. But trust the ruling coalition in West Bengal to know their Marx. So people’s right has always far outweighed environmental concerns during their two-decade-long stint in power.

But our so-called Marxists did not stop at exploiting what Marx defended as people’s right. They used it as a pretext and went on to cultivate vote banks, promote corruption and allow incompetence. As a result, the state’s natural resources and biodiversity have been reeling under the triple whammy of dangerous populism, mindless exploitation and a callous management.

No doubt these regressive trends hold true all over the country, to some extent or the other. But the West Bengal forest department cuts a particularly sorry figure. Riddled by the challenges of poaching, conflict and deforestation, this highly over-populated state with very little green cover seems to have already given up.

What else explains the construction of a mega tourism hub at Sajnekhali, bordering a waterhole? Or extracting soil from the forest or clearing mangroves to celebrate, of all things, 'forestry week'? It has been a month since these brazen irregularities were flagged in the media by concerned wildlife activists but probes ordered by the government are yet to order demolition of that scandal of a structure or fix any accountability.

However, the West Bengal forest department has a tradition of the absurd and those familiar with its ways would not be surprised at the turn of events in the Sunderbans.


Four years ago, I was in Buxa to look into claims that the reserve had lost most of its tigers. Then forest minister Jogesh Burman asserted that all was well and then field director LG Lepcha claimed the tigers of Buxa had crossed over to Bhutan. I thought he might as well explain if the tigers had gone on a vacation or had opted for a mass migration. I met him after spending four days that overlapped with an ongoing tiger census, in the field.

The census threw up just four pug marks, a few scat samples and a rare scratch mark – grossly insufficient to defend the last tiger count of 27. On my way to Lepcha, I met Rajeev Sharma, deputy FD (west Buxa), and he looked so down and tense that I did not feel like popping the dreaded question. The previous night, deputy FD (east) Shubhonkar Sengupta, a fine gentleman and possibly a good officer who had taken charge only two weeks back, conceded that he found “certain good management practices missing”.

A jovial host, Lepcha insisted I have lunch with him and cracked a few tiger jokes that were not funny. Halfway through the meal, I went for the jugular. But Lepcha was still smiling. "I know there are very few tigers here. But I can't bring it down at one go. So I decided to gradually cut down to a more realistic figure." A few minutes later, he said he would be happy to justify ten tigers. Then he came down to eight; then, seven. His smile was intact.

Suddenly, I cracked the puzzle.

Yes, Buxa was fast going the Sariska way. But Buxa would never become a Sariska. So long there were virgin forests in the contiguous stretches of Bhutan's Phipsu wildlife sanctuary, stray tigers would always be found on this side of the international border. Lepcha could inflate this very small floating population as per convenience and afford that smile.

I told him I had called his bluff but Lepcha still insisted that his tigers were away in Bhutan when, in fact, itwas Bhutan’s tigers saving him the blushes. Almost exasperated, I tried the original strategy. Why were Buxa’s tigers going to Bhutan? Why, wondered Lepcha, Bhutan’s forests must be so much nicer. I asked if he was accepting that Buxa was a disturbed, mismanaged reserve.

Lepcha’s smile broadened. “No, no, not mismanaged but very disturbed,” he leaned forward. “The forest department is doing very well. But there are more than 10,000 people in 37 forest villages inside the reserve. Now add about 70 tea gardens surrounding us with their labour colonies. Then, we have five security force camps. With so many disturbing factors, nobody can do magic in this forest. Oh, you are not having enough. Please try the sweet dish…”

I remember I obliged, silently. What could one tell an officer who so finely cut his responsibility.

Buxa was recently in news as the forest department celebrated a tiger sighting in the reserve. No, we do not know if it was a floater from Bhutan. But celebrations do not come easy at Buxa. Finding a tiger must have been easier than successfully ticking off an entry or two from Lepcha’s long list of “disturbing factors”.

Unfortunately, this could-not-care-less paradigm is now so well institutionalised as an accepted mode of governance in West Bengal that there seems to be little hope for forests and wildlife that readily translate into land and money.

Sold on their own brand of “materialism”, our so-called Marxists dig into Marx rather selectively. Otherwise, they would have remembered the following lines from Capital (volume 3, chapter 46): “Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.”

Of course, one does not expect such Marxian wisdom to suddenly dawn on the ruling coalition. Worse, the ruling-coalition-in-waiting is not sending any better vibes either. Already, Trinamool and SUCI are fighting the Left to take control of the green booty in Sunderbans. Acquiring land for people through deforestation being the biggest pay-off for both, there is little to choose between Marx-mati-manush and maa-mati-manush.

Mazoomdaar is a conservation journalist and filmmaker