When the tiger shows the way

While experts dither over corridor viability, Rajasthan tigers end three decades of isolation by following the rivers to MP

Tehelka, 22 Feb, 2013 

It was Jaipur, late 2007. A few months before the PMO cleared the plan to fly in tigers to Sariska from Ranthambhore, an IAS officer was holding forth on the subject at a private function. “Let’s build a corridor for tigers; 100-metre wide. How much land (do) we require? It’s not even 200 km between the two forests,” he said, clearly exasperated by the delay.

Just 140 km, a colleague assured him, and generously proposed that the width of the passage be doubled: “We’ll put trees and all. It will be fenced and safe.” The enthusiasm was infectious till a senior forest officer jumped in to play spoilsport.

As forests get fragmented due to rapid incursion of roads, railways, mines, cropland or settlements, maintaining connectivity and therefore healthy gene flow among small wild populations is becoming more challenging than ever. More so, because the popular perception of a wildlife corridor, particularly to those in the corridors of power, is indistinguishable from say, freight corridors.

The term corridor gives an impression of linearity. But animals seldom move like crows fly. The shortest course we chart out for tigers at official meetings and even in research papers may not suit them at all. The route may not have enough water sources or vegetation cover in which they can sneak around. Or it may be just too crowded.

For many years now, experts and officials have been wondering how to make the 2-4 km stretch between Ranthambhore national park (RNP) and Keladevi wildlife sanctuary (KWLS) – both part of the Ranthambhore tiger reserve (RTR) but separated by the Banas river – a safe animal corridor so that tigers from the national park can populate the sanctuary.

The ravine wilderness that connects RNP and KWLS is being flattened for agriculture by local villagers who have established several hamlets to manage their new cropland. Though ecologically vibrant, ravines are classified as wasteland, reclamation of which is officially encouraged. Illegal sand mining on several stretches along the Banas further choke this passageway. Unsurprisingly, of the 50-odd Ranthambhore tigers, only one is settled in KWLS, crowded by dozens of villages and their livestock.

But while the close proximity of RNP and KWLS makes restoring connectivity look feasible, any prospect of reviving the Ranthmbhore-Kuno corridor has long been written off. Tigers from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh mated frequently till the trans-Chambal connectivity snapped three decades ago. While Kuno remained connected to other MP forests, Ranthambhore became an island, hemming in its then population of 14 tigers.

The numbers have multiplied almost four-fold in RNP since. But the only way the Ranthambhore tigers can escape disastrous consequences of inbreeding is through revival of the gene flow from MP. But nobody gave the lost corridor a chance. Once the resident tigers of Kuno were poached, it was readied for lions from Gujarat. When Narendra Modi refused to oblige, the focus shifted to reintroducing cheetahs from Africa.

Between RTR and Kuno, the mighty Chambal river forms the boundary between Rajasthan and MP. In this stretch, five Rajasthan rivers – Mez, Chakan, Kharad, Kundli and Banas -- join the Chambal from the north. Another six tributaries – Kalisindh, Parbati, Seep, Param, Doni and Kuno – reach from the south.

Dispersing tigers prefer to keep to watercourses. Each of these meandering rivers connects RNP to neighbouring forests. Along the Chambal axis, Chakan, Kharad and Kundli lead to Sawai Mansingh sanctuary while Mez offers passage to Ramgarh Bishdhari forests. Kalisindh is the access to Darrah sanctuary while Parbati reaches the forests of Baran district. Kuno and Param rivers pass through the Kuno sanctuary while Doni and Seep flow in the larger Kuno landscape.

In the recent past, Ranthambhore tigers have travelled far and wide – Kota, Bharatpur and Mathura – as the rivers flow. There was no reason why they, if their nerve held, would not reach Kuno in MP. In fact, quite a few floaters – the last one in 2010 -- ventured south inside MP across the Chambal but eventually moved back to Rajasthan.

So, many considered it a fluke when a Ranthambhore male (T38) walked out of RNP’s Sultanpur area in late 2010 and reached Kuno in January 2011. The itinerary is sketchy but T38 walked south-east to cross the Banas and spent two weeks in a patch of ravine forest before crossing the Chambal at its confluence with Param and then followed the river upstream to reach the heart of Kuno. It was a leisurely journey, with many stopovers and kills.

Yet, T38 was merely considered lucky, till a sub-adult tiger decided to match his skills last month. One of the three cubs of T26, the young male left RNP’s Khandar area on 23 January. It reached the Banas the next day and apparently sensing mining activities to its right, turned left along the river, crossed a couple of roads, and climbed atop the hills of KWLS using the only available pass by 26 January. Unimpressed by the mess inside Keladevi, it charted its course down to the Chambal river and across to MP in the next five days.

Here, its intuition took over again and it chose to follow the Kuno river southward. Parallel to the Chambal, runs a 12-feet deep irrigation canal which briefly goes inside a tunnel while passing over the Kuno river. The tiger reached the other side of the canal walking under this tunnel on 5 February and, as if to reward himself, made its first kill in MP soon after.

Then it slowed down in the comfort zone of reserve forests south of Kuno sanctuary that offer ample feral cattle. The tiger has made three more kills since and is not showing any urgency to head southward along the river. It has already walked at least 80 km, more than the linear distance between RNP and Kuno, without being spotted even once and is a day’s walk away from joining predecessor T38 inside the sanctuary.

Unlike T38 in 2011, T26 junior is being tracked daily by the forest departments of the two states with the help of TigerWatch, a Ranthambhore NGO, and village wildlife watchers appointed for the task. Tired of waiting for lions, and now cheetahs, the guards at Kuno sound both excited and nervous to be hosting tigers again. Veterans, who still remember Kuno’s last tigers, are wary of poachers even as they pray that the next Ranthambhore crossover is a female.

The remarkable journeys of the Ranthambhore duo have three lessons for us. The wild does not need handholding and knows what it is up to. The river courses, and the surrounding ravines, must be secured and monitored for tiger migration. Every tiger in transit needs rigorous tracking to avoid poaching or conflict.

Meanwhile, with RNP finally having surplus tigers and habitats not improving in KWLS, dispersal of cats outside the reserve will continue. As a bunch of cubs get ready to break free in the coming months, Kuno is likely to welcome a few more tigers, hopefully females this time, from Ranthambhore.

Once the settlers start breeding in Kuno, young tigers will eventually venture further south inside MP to find partners or perhaps individuals from MP’s northernmost tiger pockets will come checking at Kuno. With time, the reverse wild traffic will hit Ranthambhore, carrying fresh genes to Rajasthan in many decades.

If only we take cue from the tiger instead of deciding for it.

Of Love And Other Interests

Contrasting Accounts Of Two Iconic Conservationists Stop Short Of Prying Open Cupboards That Held More Than Frogs Or Fizzy Drinks

Tehelka, 22 Feb, 2013

I was tempted to read the two books simultaneously. Both deal with wildlife, conservation and conservationists. Both are written by authors in awe of and in love with their subjects. Yet, I finished reading one long before I was done with the other.

Janaki Lenin’s My Husband and Other Animals is a collection of her short pieces written for a newspaper. Soonoo Taraporewala’s Tiger Warrior is a biography based on her interactions with the tiger conservationist Fateh Singh Rathore, his family and friends. The first is infectious in its playfulness; the second is a catalogue of the spoils of a remarkable life.

Lenin is a wildlife documentary filmmaker turned natural history writer who is serious about not appearing to be taking herself or her husband, herpetologist Romulus Whitaker, too seriously. Taraporewala retired as a librarian and brings the formal rigour of the profession to her book even at the cost of being rather mechanical.

Both serve their own purpose. Popular green writing in India ceased to be popular with the passing away of M Krishnan. Unlike most of her contemporaries in the media, Lenin is not easily sentimental and deals more in humour than sermons. The readability of her book has the potential to revive a stagnating genre.

If My Husband and Other Animals can excite readers not deeply into wild things, Tiger Warrior satisfies curiosities about Fateh’s life among his admirers. While his was not a particularly secretive life, Fateh was to tiger conservation what Elvis was to rock ‘n’ roll, and many familiar with only a facet or two of Mr Ranthambhore will thank Taraporewala for chronicling his life in meticulous detail.

Tiger Warrior gives an account of almost everything about Fateh. His ancestry, family, childhood, education, early love and marital discords, how the aspiring actor developed a passion for the tiger and conservation, how he single handedly transformed a messy scrub forest into a tiger haven called Ranthambhore, the many sacrifices he made, the iconic status he achieved, the numerous controversies that followed him and his eventual vindication, his zest for life and defiance before a death foreordained by cancer.

Yet, to me, the real Fateh — in flesh, blood and warts — does not really come through in Tiger Warrior. Taraporewala touches upon every aspect of his life but stops shy of the sensitive. She does talk about the generous tippler who gave up drinking once his liver was damaged. But the unabashed charmer of women remains absent. Fateh’s penchant for acquiring land, not only for his forests but also for himself, what he once described to me as “quintessentially Rajput”, does not find a mention.

Taraporewala notes in passing that Fateh had differences with his long-time friend Valmik Thapar and how fellow conservationists tried to dissuade patrons from funding Fateh’s NGO TigerWatch. But why Fateh fell out with his close friends and compatriots, and how the isolation dismayed and angered him in turn, remain unchartered territories. Nor does the book throw any light on how Fateh, who as an officer dealt with poachers with a degree of ruthlessness, became a believer in the rehabilitation of hunting tribes in his final years.

That said, Taraporewala offers a treasure of unknown nuggets: why Queen Elizabeth credited her treasurer for the tiger she shot herself, how Rajiv Gandhi turned down a state proposal to install a power generator at Jogi Mahal during his stay inside the park, what made Bill Clinton stretch his evening safari much beyond the security schedule, or how many bottles of Coke a young Valmik downed in a single sitting.

But one gets a feeling that Taraporewala relied too much on Fateh’s casual reminiscences even for verifiable facts. For example, top Ranthambhore officials were not removed the very day — as she claims in the book — the Rajasthan police arrested a few poachers following Fateh’s leads. They could not have been, because it was a secret raid, details of which were shared within the government only after days of interrogation and followup investigation. There are a few such tall claims in Tiger Warrior.

Elsewhere, the author gushes about how “every book written by Valmik on Ranthambhore… helped enormously in the writing of this biography”. The downside of this influence is the repetition of a few of Thapar’s errors in her book: Taraporewala writes that “In November 2004, the Wildlife Institute of India issued a report saying there were no tigers left in Sariska.” Such a report would’ve made quite a few errant IFS officers guilty of perjury, if only it was ever issued.

Coming soon after Fateh’s death, Tiger Warrior is a must-have on any green bookshelf and will serve as the prime reference for all future biographies of Mr Ranthambhore. My only complaint is that Taraporewala leaves it to adjectives to give the reader a sense of the “gregarious person with a wicked sense of fun, like a naughty but very lovable child” who was “exuberant, large-hearted and generous to a fault”. It’s a true description of Fateh that she does not care to illustrate with too many anecdotes.

But whenever she recounts one, the narrative lights up instantly: Fateh’s elder daughter Padmini once overheard a fellow passenger in a train brag about knowing “the great Tiger Man, six feet two inches tall (about half a foot more than Fateh’s height), who strode effortlessly through the most rugged landscapes, drank a bucketful of rich creamy milk and ate a whole goat every single day. Just as Padmini was trying to envisage the effect that such a rich diet would have on her father’s weak digestive system, a ticket checker came along, and spoilt the fun by recognising her and asking after her father.”

Lenin’s My Husband and Other Animals, on the other hand, is conversational, personal and intimate — almost to a fault. Unlike Taraporewala — who, for all her devotion to Ranthambhore and Fateh, always remained a regular tourist visiting from Mumbai — Lenin moved in with an assortment of wildlife, including frogs, ants, snakes, monkeys and a husband, at a wild farm. This ‘naturalisation’ of a city woman entails a series of petty but unusual challenges. Naturally, Lenin is not short of stories.

Being part of the ‘Page 3 crowd’ of the conservation circuit, she enjoys access to a range of experts and taps that knowledge base well. Most of her quests are esoteric and yet intriguing enough to keep the reader hooked. Her interest ranges from ‘immaculate animal conception’ to body odour. She explores the connection between sambhar, the south Indian dish, and sambar, the Asian deer; examines how different animal potty habits reflect on Indians who relieve themselves outdoors; and learns to flog trees that do not flower easily.

Of course, My Husband and Other Animals is a lot about the husband. We learn a lot about Rom’s early life, adventures, quirks, mischievousness, determination and achievements. Lenin seldom uses qualifiers to describe her man but the numerous stories she narrates portray “the dude” as “the king of cool” whose voice often “trails” and who is possibly vulnerable to bullying at home.

Lenin’s breezy style stumbles on occasion, when she attempts to address less esoteric issues such as relocation of villages or releasing hand-raised animals in the wild. Even otherwise, not all essays conform to the general flair that marks My Husband and Other Animals. Also, like the Gerald Durrell-inspired title, some ideas explored in the book are not particularly original.

She is at her best when not encumbered by a brief or purpose. “Why do they (animals) play?” wonders Lenin in an essay, “To me, that’s a silly question. Why do we play? It relieves stress, builds camaraderie… and mostly, it is just sheer good fun.” She could well be explaining why she writes, or why one must read her book.

Karnataka’s conservation fix: To fetch water for tigers or not

Dry summer spells weed out the old and the weak from wild populations. If only our misplaced welfare motive would allow.

FirstPost, 18 Feb, 2013

It is nature versus nurture, with a twist. The green fraternity is engaged in a strange battle in Karnataka over artificially replenishing waterholes in tiger reserves in the dry summer months. While one group has lashed out against the decision of the state forest department to do so, others feel there is nothing wrong with the move as long as tankers do not ferry contaminated water from outside.

Former member of the National Board for Wildlife Praveen Bhargav, wildlife biologist Ullas Karanth and conservationist KM Chinappa are among those opposed to unnecessary interventions that disrupt natural ecological processes. Others claim that drought management has been a common practice that features in the guideline issued by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).

Tiger with bait. Image courtesy: Aditya Singh.

Dry summer months test animals in the wild. It is a weeding process that eliminates the old and the weak so that the young and healthy have access to more resources and a better chance to thrive. It ensures that only the best genes remain in circulation and the future generations of animals are born robust.

Yet, conflicting situations, such as the one now playing out in Karnataka, arise because most of us cannot or do not differentiate between conservation and welfare. Put simply, animal welfare is about caring for every single animal. It is relevant for domestic animals because the very act of domestication makes us responsible for our dogs or cattle. It is natural that we feed the house cat daily and take it to a vet when it is sick.

But wildlife conservation has nothing to do with the fate of individual animals. The future of the species does not depend on the survival of a famished or injured tiger. Yet, we are increasingly restless to “help out” wildlife. But every time we treat an injured wild tiger or feed one that cannot hunt, we breach a cardinal rule of conservation by interrupting nature that knows far better.

When it is not pure sentiment, our welfare motive is often an excuse. In 2010, for example, the West Bengal government decided to release some captive-bred spotted deer in Sunderbans to discourage tigers from venturing into human settlements, looking for food. The authorities would have us, and perhaps the tigers, believe that releasing a few dozen cheetals in an area teeming with domestic cattle (more than 400 per square kilometre) would dissuade the big cats from easy takeaway meals.

The move, in fact, was to dump surplus animals in Sunderbans in the garb of a conservation drive after failing to manage deer populations in captivity. Many animals would have carried tuberculosis infection from their squalid enclosures. Bereft of any fear of humans, most were destined to boost Sunderbans’ flourishing venison trade.

But even when our welfare motive is sincere, it often harms the wild. While many want to brand every carnivore that had a chance encounter with humans a maneater, animal welfare groups refuse to accept that a confirmed problem animal must be eliminated as quickly as possible. They first question the ‘problem’ tag. Then, they insist that the animal be taken to a zoo rather than be put down.

Such bargaining often causes delay and, at times, more damage by turning the affected communities against conservation and putting entire species at risk for the welfare of one animal. Ironically, from the perspective of wildlife conservation, it does not matter if a problem tiger is shot dead or taken to some zoo because both mean one tiger less in the wild.

Every time a state forest department wants to cull wild boars or blue bulls where the animals have become pests, the welfare lobby goes up in arms and proposes alternative mitigation methods such as electric fencing around agricultural fields. But it is very difficult to keep animals away using such contraptions. Used locally, electric fencing diverts animals to the next village. Used extensively, it turns forests into fenced zoos. But how does it help the animals?

If we really believe that animals are raiding crops or cattle because there is little food inside forests, denying them access to cropland will eventually bring down their populations. If we are fine with death by starvation far from our sight, why fuss over culling?

Nothing fired our inspiration to help the wild more than the 1966 blockbuster based on Joy Adamson’s Born Free. No wonder so many of us are hooked to the idea of nursing wild animals particularly big cats, in distress. Across the country, we bait and treat old and injured tigers or bring up orphaned cubs to release them in the wild.

In Ranthambhore, tigress Machhli is just one of many wild cats fed by the authorities. In 2010, an orphaned cub raised by the forest staff was killed by a wild tiger and another died of an injury while trying to hunt. In 2011, three villagers were killed by hand-raisedleopards released in the wild by the Mysore royalty and a Bangalore-based NGO.

Replenishing waterholes so that tigers and other wildlife do not go thirsty may not have such extreme consequences – unless the water is contaminated – but it reflects the same selfish welfare motive. We want to return orphaned cubs back to the wild, keep old tigers on food doles, treat injured wildlife or ferry water for them because it makes us feel good. More than the wild, it is our perception of the wild that we really care for and want to pamper.

Our national security plan: Racing China to disaster

The neighbours do not really need an arms race. The competition for growth and infrastructure is suicidal enough.

FirstPost, 10 Feb, 2013

After Bollywood, distrust of Pakistan and cricket (not necessarily in that order), what unites most Indians is our fear of China. The RSS worries about the Chinese cyber threat. The CII is wary of cheap Chinese hardware. Our pharmas are jittery about their dependence on imports from China. Even our sportspersons tend to lose it in the mind against Chinese competition.

But the most common frustration among Indians—from the National Conference to the Trinamool Congress and from senior intelligence officials to intelligent think tanks—is that we have failed to match China’s infrastructural progress. A vast road and rail network in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) gives Beijing the military edge, massive hydro-electric projects close to our borders — it’s a nightmare unfolding.

It is ironic that the big bully at Saarc should feel so threatened by its only bigger neighbour. It is still more ironic that India, instead of learning from its mistakes, is so desperate to play catch-up on China’s terms.

The Chinese feats look impressive. The train to Lhasa has been running across the roof of the world since 2006. The Tibetan capital is also connected to the Sikkim border 430 km away and the journey takes less than three hours. Since 2008, road network in the TAR has expanded by almost 20,000 km. As a result, China can apparently deploy 30 divisions or 4,50,000 soldiers at the borders within a month and outnumber our forces by at least 3:1.

Since the drubbing in 1962, the Indian strategy was to keep border roads in terrible conditions to stop an invading Red Army from marching in too fast. It took us nearly four decades to hit the other extreme. Now we want 18 strategic tunnels so that troop movements remain invisible. A 9-km tunnel under Rohtang pass at 13,400-feet is being built to facilitate mobilisation along the Sarchu-Leh region. Apparently, five more are proposed in Jammu and Kashmir, two in Sikkim and quite a few in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.

Work is also in progress since 1999-2000 on 73 all-weather border roads, out of which 42 are to be ready by the end of this year. According to media reports, the capability development plan on the northern borders is worth Rs 26,155 crore while border infrastructure projects worth Rs 9,243 crore are being carried out in the eastern theatre. There are also calls to take the railways up to Nathu La in Sikkim.

Almost all of these projects threaten to ravage virgin ecosystems in remote areas. The standard construction process in India involves indiscriminate blasting in the hills that destroys a lot more than is necessary, including vast areas in the slopes where the debris slides down. The laggard pace of construction so typical of India prolongs the damage.

At each camping site, migrant labourers set up large camps and fell forests for firewood because contractors do not provide fuel. They divert water from natural sources for both construction and household use and dump garbage, including solid waste, in the open. Worse, most of these labour camps become permanent settlements after completion of projects.

Does China fare any better? For all its cutting edge technology that lays down roads and tracks in record time, it could not (or did not really care to) insulate the environment from its development rush. While little information is available on the ecological impact of its various smaller projects, the famous Qinghai-Lhasa railway tracks, and the highway parallel to it, have caused irreversible damage to what biologist George Schaller called “the high altitude Serengeti” – the expansive home to a fascinating range of flora and fauna, 142 of those endangered.

Worst has been the impact on the chiru, the highly-endangered Tibetan antelope. The alignments cut off the migratory routes that the animals take to their northern breeding grounds, just like the caribou do in North America or the wildebeest in East Africa. Though 33 wildlife passages have been created along this 1,956-km railroad, these are far from adequate for providing connectivity. In Canada, a 75-km highway through the Banff national park has 22 underpasses. In all of India, animal passages do not add up to even a dozen.

At an average height of 4,000 meters, Tibet’s delicate ecosystem takes decades, even centuries, to recover fully and large scale destruction of vegetation is leading to rapid desertification on both sides of the road and railways. The development spurt has shrunk Tibet’s grassland areas by more than one-fourth since the 1970s. Between 1949 and 1985, Tibet already lost nearly half its forest to extraction of timber worth $54 billion.

Meanwhile, improved connectivity has made exploration and transportation of minerals convenient in Tibet which is China’s last refuge after having exhausted all major non-ferrous minerals. By 2020, half of China’s major mineral reserves may go empty. Rapid growth exacts its price. Yet, there is no clarity on environmental safety measures yet in and around Tibet’s minefields.

The same peril has forced China to turn to Tibet for water and electricity. River water is being diverted from west to east China to support agriculture. The hydroelectric project on Yamdrok Tso, a sacred Tibetan lake, had triggered a fierce environmental debate in the 1990s. While construction of a 510 MW plant at Zangmu in TAR is going on now, China has announced three new projects to take the cumulative yield from Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) beyond 1,500 MW.

In response, India signed MoUs for 140 hydel projects in Arunachal Pradesh alone. To match China’s three new dams, the Environment ministry has hurriedly cleared two projects in Tawang district. In doing so, it skirted recommendations made by statutory bodies to examine the cumulative impact of 13 projects within just 2,085 sq km of Tawang before clearing any. It made up a lie of an excuse saying that Tawang II was the first and only project cleared and the rest would be subject to cumulative impact assessment. Last April, the 780MW Nyamjang chhu project—coming up on a tributary of the Tawang river—got the ministry’s nod.

While governments in India bulldoze laws and regulations to compete with China, what does the Chinese experience really tell us?

Due to intense developmental activities, the roof of the world is getting hot. Cracks have developed in the railroad’s concrete structures as its permafrost foundation is sinking and cracking in some sections of the 550-km unstable stretch. While Xinhua reported that the government did not expect that the tracks would last the next 40 years, foreign engineers in the project gave it 20 years. Even reinforcing the main Lhasa highway cost China $146.6 million in the last decade.

High levels of deforestation in Tibet has also led to acute sedimentation in the Huang Ho, the Tsangpo (Brahmaputra), the Yangtze and the Senge Khabab (Indus). More dams are not helping these rivers that support nearly half the world’s population and much of its biodiversity. If over-harnessing continues, China will have to invent new water sources for irrigation and substitutes for hydro power. Inexplicably, China is yet to tap Tibet’s Sahara-like solar energy potential before killing its mighty rivers.

While India cannot quite escape the climatic impact of any major ecological change in the Tibet plateau as it influences pan-Asian weather, we are rushing to destroy our own rivers, forests and mountains by blindly emulating the short-sighted neighbour. We are trading very tangible water, food and livelihood security for a perception called national security. There may or may not be an Indo-China war in the future but, at this rate, we will certainly not need one to doom ourselves.

A Damned Race For Power

 How we threw away the green rulebook in our obsession to keep up with China

Tehelka, 8 Feb, 2013

WITH MORE than 80 percent forest cover, Arunachal Pradesh is one of the last repositories of virgin wilderness where new species are still discovered every few months. The state also faces a 15 percent power shortfall. So, a section of Arunachal’s political leadership is desperate to harness the vast potential of its numerous fast-flowing rivers. More than 140 MoUs have been inked to set up hydro-electricity projects (HEPS) in the state.

In Tawang district, this power rush reached an absurd high. Seven rivers flow through the Tawang basin, where as many as 13 HEPS have been proposed across just 2,085 sq km. There is hardly any agricultural land left in this hilly district where the armed forces and civic infrastructural facilities occupy more than half the area. Once the HEPS come up, even the remaining cropland by the rivers will be lost. Besides, 13 HEPS will require a peak workforce of more than 1 lakh people, double the population of the district. One can imagine what the influx will mean to the Monpa residents, whose indigenous rights are protected by the Constitution.

A part of the Eastern Himalayan Biodiversity hotspot, Tawang is also one of the 200 globally important eco-regions and the only place on earth that hosts all varieties of Rhododendron. It is also home to the red panda, snow leopard, mountain goat and 150 species of birds. The impact of intensive blasting, tunnelling and submergence required for building 13 HEPS in this pristine landscape will be an environmental disaster.

Only nine years ago, then chief minister Gegong Apang announced a plan to set up a 2,000 sq km bio-reserve. As political priorities changed rapidly in Itanagar and New Delhi, Buddhist monks from the Monpa community made the Tawang monastery the centre of resistance. Since April last year, Save Mon Region Federation has repeatedly defied Section 144 and clashed with the police to demand that all 13 proposed HEPS, including the 600 MW Tawang-I and 800 MW Tawang-II, be scrapped. As recently as Christmas Eve last year, a violent showdown led to several arrests and injured protesters.

While both Tawang-I and II already had the required green clearances from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), the pressure from the local communities and the obvious irrationality of setting up so many HEPS in such a tiny basin made the Forest Advisory Committee recommend a cumulative impact study instead of evaluating each project on its own. That was last September. In just four months, the table was turned.

Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan came under strong pressure from various infrastructure ministries and the PMO. Her high-profile face-off with Finance Minister P Chidambaram on the proposed National Investment Board (NIB) forced the PMO to dilute the NIB’s overriding powers and rechristen it a Cabinet committee. But soon enough, it was time for quid pro quo.

The NHAI claimed the first pound of flesh by making the MoEF allow work along the non-forest parts of the projects, pending forest clearance. With the coal ministry already breathing down her neck, Power Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia paid Natarajan a visit. Then, China announced three new dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) along the border.

While construction of a 510 MW plant at Zangmu in the Tibet Autonomous Region is going on since 2010, the three new projects — at Dagu (640 MW), Jiacha (320 MW) and Jiexu (unspecified) — took the cumulative yield to beyond 1,470 MW. The Indian answer, insisted the power ministry, had to be fast-tracking Tawang-I and II and generate 1,400 MW.

So, the MoEF promptly wrote to Arunachal CM Nabam Tuki to proceed with the basin study and the Tawang HEPS were granted stage-I clearance without bothering for any cumulative or specific impact study. There is a rider of a consolation though: the other 11 HEPS will have to wait till their cumulative impact is assessed. That is until China decides to come up with a few more dams.

The growth vs green debate: Not in the name of the poor

The poor custodians of natural resources on the ground have become dispensable pawns in the games the growth and the green lobbies play.

FirstPost, 4 Feb, 2013

As the growth versus green debate intensifies with the Environment ministry issuing benchmarks for marking no-go areas, the coal ministry and the NHAI building pressure for clearances through the PMO and the National Investment Board being rechristened as Cabinet Committee on Investment, both sides are building their case on the poor’s right to a better life. Unfortunately, it is a matter of convenience, and not conviction, for both.

Conservationists are mostly well-to-do hypocrites who fly around the world to fight for virgin nature and thereby seek to perpetuate poverty among the less privileged. Environmentalism is an industry that supports lakhs of activists and experts most of whom are not averse to the good things in life (read large carbon footprints) and deal mostly in banal symbolism of turning off taps or observing earth-hour once a year. Most of them are also anti-people (read anti-poor) and believe in feudal models of conservation through exclusion.

The poor grudge the environmentalism that wants to create inviolate areas by uprooting villages or denying people their traditional rights over natural resources. While it is the most convenient means to protect nature in its pristine form, wilderness often stands a better chance in the custody of local communities. Ownership does not isolate the poor from the cause of conservation. In the three-way battle that is unfolding all over the country, their support is invaluable when the greens take on the forces of growth.

Development or just a menial job in a mine for him? Reuters

Certain areas need to be left undisturbed — even if they sit atop mineral riches or stand in the way of roads and railways — for their irreplaceable ecological value. It is in such places that the growth argument depicting environmentalism as anti-poor gets vocal. Ironically, when the local poor oppose projects such as mines and industries, the growth argument shifts track to go national: what if the ignorant locals do not appreciate the benefits of a project, it must get through in the national interest.

So the growth advocates demand destructive access to the last remaining pristine forests, mountains, rivers or coasts in the name of nation building which apparently entails hauling the poor above the poverty line. Apparently, the state cannot provide the poor tribal basic healthcare or education because the so-called ignorant lot – the green hypocrites and the tribals themselves — refuse to allow the state to rip apart virgin forests for extracting minerals or setting up factories.

Without encumbering readers with reams of available data, suffice to say that no mine or mega factory has significantly bettered the lot of the local poor. A few low-paying menial jobs are all that come at the cost of displacement and loss of traditional resources and livelihood. At the same time, the gain to the national exchequer has never compared favourably to the largesse offered to investors. Let’s not even go into the obvious dynamics of how money eventually finds its way into deeper pockets.

Growth cannot be achieved without harnessing natural resources. The poverty map of the world overlaps with that of its best remaining wilderness. The same is true for India. Our poorest districts are also the greenest. People like you and me are better off than the poor tribal because our forefathers cut off their share of the forests that once stood on the now-barren but prosperous parts of India. The poor tribals are poor because their predecessors did not monetise their forests.

The growth lobby now wants to usurp those remaining forests to line their own pockets in the name of helping the tribals out of poverty. Worse, now that the value of the last remaining wilderness is appreciated by the greens, they want to dislodge the tribals from the very forests their forefathers conserved.

But as their numbers multiply and forests shrink, the forest communities can barely sustain themselves with natural produce alone. The pressure is telling on the last remaining wilderness across the country. But if forests must disappear, the right of extraction should stay with the communities that historically nurtured those areas and not with the miners or industrialists from outside. If forests must be conserved by imposing rights restriction, the same communities must be compensated for their rights and historical services.

In simpler terms, if we so much value the forests others did not cut down, we must share the wealth we made by cutting down our forests everywhere else. It cannot be a pittance in the name of compensation. Our economy cannot grudge offering the forest communities their rightful share. The state must invest the revenue generated elsewhere in healthcare, education and other civic infrastructure across our poor forested districts. It cannot crib about missing out on the forestland and mines. It must instead factor in the priceless ecological services.

If we do not blindly rush to harness the remaining natural resources and also invest in vast areas we hitherto considered unproductive, no doubt our growth as we perceive it will suffer. But however dirty the word sounds to most of us, sustainability is a reality none of us can escape. Ecological security is the most crucial aspect of national security. That arbitrary benchmark of a 9 or 11 per cent growth is a burnout formula. We have to make a choice if we instead prefer to rationalise our targets and last longer.

Even in a more realistic scenario, some extractive use of natural resources will always be necessary to keep the economy going. The benefits in such cases should first reach the host communities. Instead of merely heaping them with doles, all developmental (and conservation) projects that come up on their land with their consent should offer them an ownership stake.

It is sad enough that the poor tend to have the least say in the debate despite having the material possession of resources on the ground over which the growth and the green lobbies spar. If equity is a distant dream, they can at least be spared the fate of dispensable pawns.

Crying ELEPHANT

Trains can’t crawl and still be efficient. Wildlife can’t be watched over along the entire length of killer tracks passing through forests. Only strategic investment, not symbolism, can benefit both. 

Open, 2 Feb, 2013

Hundreds of kilometres of railway tracks run through our wilderness. Every time elephants are run over, we question if the killer train broke the speed embargo of 40-50 kmph inside forests. At the same time, we also cheer Indian Railways as it aspires to run high-speed trains by 2020 that will clock 250-350 kmph.

Last week, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways met to discuss how to stop elephant deaths on railway tracks. Between 30 December and 13 January, 11 elephants were killed on railway tracks in three corners of India. Each site has long been designated an elephant zone, where locomotive drivers are supposed to follow real-time inputs from forest staff on elephant movements, watch out and go slow.

The stretch close to Berhampur in Odisha, where the Coromandel Express ran over six jumbos on 30 December, between two warning signs of elephant movement put up by the Railways itself, has seen many more wild animals killed in the past, including an elephant last May. The tracks between north Bengal’s Alipurduar and Siliguri, which claimed three jumbos inside Buxa tiger reserve this month, was responsible for three dozen elephant deaths in the last decade. The third accident took place between Haridwar and Dehradun, where a high-profile protocol to avoid elephant deaths on tracks tripped after 12 years.

What matched these deaths in their unpredictability was the official blame game that followed. In Odisha, the Railways claimed that the input on elephant movement had reached it too late. In Bengal, it said the locomotive driver was well within rights to go at 100 kmph in the dark because it was still half an hour to 7 pm when speed restrictions come into force. At Haridwar, where a speeding Shatabdi hit the herd under a clear morning sky, it was blamed on the sudden emergence of the animals on the track. The Odisha forest authorities complained that the trains were not following speed restrictions along vulnerable elephant zones across four districts. In Bengal, the department increased the length of the go-slow zone along the 163 km stretch between Alipurduar and Siliguri from 17.4 km to 97 km. It also woke up to the fact that the 7 pm-5 am low-speed window did not cover the extended dark hours during winter and imposed a sunset-sunrise schedule.

In March 2010, the environment ministry had issued an advisory to the Railways to avoid elephant deaths. Six months on, when seven elephants were run over in north Bengal, then Environment minister Jairam Ramesh talked tough, waving that advisory. Last week, his successor Jayanthi Natarajan circulated the same advisory yet again. She also spoke of updating “the list of well-known vulnerable patches for wildlife”, posting forest staff at Railway control rooms in sensitive areas and regular meetings between the ministries.

Then, to throw in some novelty, the minister announced “a pilot scheme to electronically tag all elephants particularly in high-traffic areas” to ensure railway officials were warned “well in time”. Satellite collars can send real-time data on herd locations at quick intervals. But is it feasible or even desirable to collar hundreds of elephants? Forget the high density landscapes of Odisha and Uttarakhand, Buxa in north Bengal alone has more than 200 elephants. Other vulnerable forests in that region—Jaldapara, Gorumara, Chapramari and Mahananda—have many more.

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Though elephant deaths are the most visible, thousands of wild animals die on railway tracks and highways that cut through forested areas every year. These accidents also risk passenger safety. The night six jumbos were mowed down near Berhampur last month, one person died on board from the impact of the collision. So far, the Railways have been lucky to avoid major passenger casualties. But collisions with elephants almost invariably damage and derail locomotives, lead to temporary suspensions of service, and cost the exchequer in crores every year. Yet, none of our remedies, such as tagging all animals or imposing blanket speed limits or banning night traffic, is practical.

Rail and road traffic must move fast to be efficient. Speed restrictions are feasible only when imposed along a short stretch, such as the 11 km killer track near Berhampore in Odisha or the 8 km stretch that cuts through Jharkhand’s Palamu or the 4 km death trap in the Palghat Gap that connects Kerala’s Palakkad and Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore on both sides of the Western Ghats. But what is the point of restricting speed along nearly 100 km between Alipurduar and Siliguri when there is a less vulnerable alignment available through Fala- kata in north Bengal?

Of the 88 identified elephant corridors in India, 40 have national highways running through them, 21 have railway tracks and 18 have both. Not only these corridors, roads and railways cut through hundreds of kilometres of elephant and other wildlife habitat. It makes no economic sense to impose speed restrictions on such lengths of the network. Worse, accidents can never be ruled out even at low speeds due to a number of factors, including human error.

“If there is traffic, some loss will always happen. But limiting speed over long distances is not a realistic long-term solution. If we are serious about minimising damage, we have to take radical measures acceptable to all stakeholders and not only conservationists,” says Ajay Desai, co-chairman of the Elephant Task Force (ETF), set up by the MoEF in 2010. Vivek Menon, executive director of Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) and a member of the ETF, points out that speed restrictions are anyway not an option on steep gradients, such as Assam’s Karbi Anglong, where trains must run fast to climb the slope. The best way to ensure both efficiency and safety, agree Desai and Menon, is to realign where possible road/ rail corridors that cut through critical forests.

But some alignments must still cut through forests. For example, if Dehra- dun has to be connected, the tracks must pass through Rajaji national park. But even there, speed is not the only killing factor. A team of WTI researchers studied accidents in Rajaji and found that most elephants were run over by trains at spots where either the locomotive was coming round a bend or the track was flanked by sharp slopes.

Interventions based on this knowledge and reduced speed ensured that no elephants were killed on this track for 12 years till the system tripped last week. Insiders blame it on the complacency of both the ground patrol team and the drivers. More than a decade ago, the Railways had sought to fence off the most vulnerable stretch of this track and experts cleared the proposal since it did not significantly hamper herd movement. The fence, however, is still not in place. Desai says monitoring herds and alerting drivers of their presence cannot be a fool-proof method in difficult terrain. Menon prescribes site-specific solutions that are practical and scientific. But when it comes to the Railways or highway authorities, the stock solution is to provide low-cost overpasses or underpasses, which are no more spacious than drainage or service ducts.

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A few years ago, the Supreme Court sought the view of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) on the viability of building two elephant overpasses on a national highway that cut through Rajaji national park. Asked if elephants would use those overpasses, the WII chief said: “Ask the elephants!”

The SC rejected the overpass plan. Instead, a 0.9 km elevated stretch of highway between Motichur and Doiwala is being built at a cost of Rs 100 crore. There is a similar demand in north Bengal to build elevated tracks over the most vulnerable stretches. But the authorities insist on cheaper solutions.

All over Europe, Canada and the US, hundreds of artificial passages help reduce animal road kill. But most of these are used by amphibians, invertebrates, badgers, ungulates and other small mammals. Among the largest animals to benefit from such artificial access are mountain goat (Montana), mule deer, elk, moose (Nugget Canyon), the bighorn sheep (Colorado) and the panther (Florida). But there is no record yet of elephants using an overpass.

Sensitive to vibrations caused by the traffic below, elephants are unlikely to use an overpass even if it is built by joining two hillocks in a way that the natural alignment appears intact. They also avoid narrow tunnel-like underpasses. Funnelling the animals towards the underpass is also critical because herds stick to their traditional routes. The first instance of elephants taking an underpass was recorded in South Africa’s Kwazulu Natal province. Then, Kenya built a six-metre long underpass, linking Mount Kenya National Park and Nagre Ndare Forest Reserve, which is being used by herds since last year. At home, solitary bulls occasionally used the Dogudda aqueduct to cross the Chilla-Rishikesh highway but matriarchal herds stayed away. Then, towards the end of 2010, we had the first evidence in India that underpasses, when built properly, do allow regular herd movement.

About 35 km of NH 152 that connects Assam’s Pathsala to Bhutan’s Nganglam cuts through the buffer zone of Manas national park. Anwaruddin Choudhury, then deputy commissioner of Buxa district, insisted on realigning the original road that ran through the core of the national park and constructing two underpasses.

“For once, both the state and central authorities were receptive to the idea. Knowing that budgetary constraints will inevitably scale things down, I asked for 100 metre long and 50 feet high underpasses because elephants rarely squeeze through narrow gaps,” recalls Choud- hury. When the highway was ready in 2010, it offered two 30 feet high and 100 feet wide passageways, which elephant herds started using within months.

The other solution, as has been recommended for the highway cutting through the Kaziranga landscape, is to take the road underground. Technologies such as elephant sensors that trigger automatic braking have the potential of making railway tracks safer for animals. In many areas, says Desai, it is possible to simply funnel elephants with fencing to designated level-crossing zones where they, particularly calves, will not struggle to climb up or down the tracks. It is important, though, to use barriers across the tracks at such crossings so that jumbos do not get trapped by entering segments flanked by fences.

With the Railways planning to expand in the red corridor, new tracks will be laid across vast tracts of elephant forest in central India. The highway authorities have been pushing for clearances to expand roads through some of India’s best wilderness. “We have to prioritise because we cannot overnight realign all forest routes across India. But we must consider the speed and safety issues while planning these new projects,” warns Menon.

Be it realignments, flyovers, tunnels or spacious animal passageways, the infrastructure solutions will require additional investment. But India cannot shy away if it wants to protect the interests of both its economy and its wildlife. Otherwise, we can keep ignoring the loss of thousands of train hours and console ourselves that angry villagers in Buxa protested on the track for three hours, that the meat of dead elephants was sent to feed vultures at a local breeding centre, and that nearly two dozen people joined a candlelight vigil at Alipurduar.

Let a million genes flow

The MoEF seeks to mark animal corridors as no-go areas but can’t free any on the ground

Tehelka, 1 Feb, 2013

IMAGINE LIFE on a small island that nobody can leave or visit, where residents marry among themselves for all time to come. The closest we got to it in human history was not by compulsion but by choice. In the early 18th century, a small population of the Amish people left what is Germany today and settled in Pennsylvania. Since they refused to marry outside their community, the entire Amish population in the US can be traced back to 200-odd immigrants. The result is a host of rare inherited disorders, including several forms of deformity and high child mortality.

What the Amish and other conservative communities have deliberately brought upon themselves, wild animals are suffering without a choice. As the human world developed to today’s global village with literally unlimited connectivity and infinite options for selecting partners, wild turfs shrank rapidly, forests became islands and still smaller islands surrounded by civilisation. This has fragmented wildlife populations into many small isolated groups that must breed within families.

In India, too, massive deforestation that peaked in the past century has cut off forest landscapes and wildlife populations. National parks and sanctuaries cover only 5 percent of our geographical area. This is less than half the global average of 12 percent. But even within that 5 percent, most of our wild populations survive in small pockets of protected areas. The great forests that thrived over hundreds of miles along the Himalayan foothills are now hopelessly broken. Much of the wilderness in the Northeast has also suffered the same fate. The rainforests of the Western Ghats are probably the best tract of continuous wilderness that still survives.

It is the once-impregnable forests of central India — the land of the Gonds — and their rapid disintegration that perhaps poses the greatest challenge to conservation in India. This forest landscape stretches from Maharashtra all the way to Jharkhand and can support some of the largest wild populations and ensure gene flow across the breadth of the country. But for that, sanctuaries and national parks in this and other surviving forest landscapes must stay connected through forested areas known as wildlife corridors.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has underlined the need for protecting key areas outside our protected areas network while making public the proposed parameters for identifying inviolate forests last week. The process began in September 2011 when a Group of Ministers headed by then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee suggested that “all forests which can never be regenerated to the desired quality should be protected”. While the same Group of Ministers struck down then environment minister Jairam Ramesh’s “go, no-go” concept, it allowed the MoEF to identify inviolate forests that, in effect, would be “no-go”.

An expert panel set up by the ministry last March proposed an automatic inviolate tag for a range of forest areas: protected areas and a one-kilometre-ring around protected areas, compact patches of very dense forests, last remnants of forest types found in less than 50 sq km area in all in the country, areas located in direct draining catchment of important perennial streams that serve as water sources or feed hydropower projects, areas within 250 m of perennial rivers and important wetlands.

Other forested areas will be scored on a scale of 100 against each of the six parameters — forest type, biological richness, wildlife value, forest cover, landscape integrity and hydrological value — proposed by the MoEF panel and areas with a score of 70 and above will be considered inviolate. Once these parameters are finalised, the ministry will rate forest areas on a national grid of 1km x 1km units and mining will be barred if inviolate units cover more than half of a mining block.

IT WILL not be easy. The existing and proposed mining blocks are spread all over India, particularly the central Indian forest landscape that has some of our most prominent tiger reserves such as Palamu, Achanakmar, Kanha, Pench, Tadoba, Melghat and Satpura.

A number of highways — the most controversial of them all, the NH-7, runs through the Pench-Kanha landscape — also threaten to sever these protected areas from one another. Already, there is intense pressure on the MoEF from both the coal ministry and National Highway Authority of India to fast track green clearances.

At a time when the green ministry seems to be making concessions under pressure from the Prime Minister’s Office by allowing work to commence in non-forest segments of projects before forest clearances are obtained, it can draw strength from two recent papers from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. Zoologists Sandeep Sharma and Trishna Dutta and others have published two studies on the genetic diversity of tigers and leopards in the Satpura-Maikal region, the western half (Satpura-Melghat-Pench-Kanha) of the central Indian forest landscape.

For tigers, the study found two genetic populations — caused by partial isolation — in the area but there was no sharp boundary between the two. It concluded that the overall tiger population in the Satpura–Maikal landscape had not significantly suffered from inbreeding, and genetic subdivision was low between tiger reserves that were connected with forest corridors.

For leopards, which are more adaptive in nature than tigers, the study found two genetic subpopulations with indications of four developing subdivisions, indicating growing isolation. The results, it noted, “are rather surprising and indicate the role of habitat fragmentation in increasing genetic isolation”. The Satpura leopard population was found to be more distinct than the rest, indicating possible obstacles to gene flow through the Satpura-Melghat and Satpura-Pench corridors.

The studies also identified a number of migrant animals in most parts of the landscape, which underlined how vital the corridors are for maintaining regular genetic exchange. Elaborating on its parameter of landscape integrity, the MoEF panel rightly suggested that all areas located within an unfragmented landscape of 100 sq km and above will qualify for the inviolate status. But it is one thing to acknowledge the corridor value of an area, quite another to protect its integrity on the ground.

In 2005, the Wildlife Trust of India — in collaboration with 10 state forest departments — came up with a comprehensive list of 88 elephant corridors of India. Three corridors of high conservation priority between Corbett and the Ramnagar forest division on two sides of the Kosi river were identified as Mohan- Kumaria, Dhangadi-Sunderkhal and Ringora-Bijrani. Several other expert panels have also identified the same corridors as absolutely crucial for movements of all wildlife, including the tiger.

Eight years later, a fenced-up government establishment — Indian Medical Pharmaceutical Co Ltd — still sits on the Mohan-Kumaria corridor, while a sprawling encroachment of a village — Sunderkhal — settled by former chief minister ND Tiwari and a plush wildlife resort — Infinity — which runs a green NGO, continue to block the other two.