Tiger Conservation: A Hard Talk
Title
The Rise and Fall of the EMERALD TIGERS:
Ten Years of Research in Panna
National Park
Author
Raghu Chundawat
Publisher
Speaking Tiger
Thanks are due to the team at First Post.
The
Rise and Fall of the EMERALD TIGERS: Ten Years of Research in Panna National
Park by Raghu Chundawat is the story of a passionate wildlife scientist and one
of the better known tiger reserves in the country. It depicts both – the
scientist’s research and monitoring work during his association with the tiger
reserve and the troubles he faced after he let the cat out of the bag by
pointing out to major mismanagement in the tiger reserve.
To
begin with the author has the guts to call a spade a spade. He is a rare
species in the wildlife conservation world where keeping shut is the norm. The
sector is infamous for not speaking up – be it to protect permits, or maintain
liaisons, or ensure funding or else.
Neither
does he shy away from taking names nor is he scared of the authorities. These
include the holy cows of wildlife conservation in India - Wildlife Institute of
India and National Tiger Conservation Authority. He describes how the authorities
used to conduct tiger census as also ‘tiger shows’. The forest department, he
adds, used to spend almost 70 percent of its funds on civil construction and
purchases and continued to use outdated practices. The later included working
around ‘beats’; ‘beats were delineated decades ago with commercial forestry in
mind’. He also talks of how the forest department went after him once he made
public the tiger conservation scenario at Panna. He succinctly points out that
while the forests warrant them to be ‘proactive and adaptive’, the forest
department ends up undertaking little more than ‘fire-fighting’. His narratives
about the forest department reminded me of the friend who used to often say –
our forests are what they are despite the forest department and not because of
them.
The
author is in his element when he treads the natural history path like when he shares
his observation like on the congregations of the four-horned antelope near
mahua trees during the flowering season. He also does not shy away from stating
observations which are ‘contrary to belief’. These portions bring out the
intensity of his efforts and make one jealous of the time he has invested in
the wilderness at Panna. He neither hesitates to put forth some of the dilemmas
and questions he came across in course of these efforts nor does he shy away
from describing the adaptations in processes the team had to undertake to
generate optimal information.
The
book helps raise broader questions which the author appears to have skirted
around.
On the
one hand we have inordinate focus on tigers in our country - to the extent that
we neglect other species. As a friend had remarked - tigers are to Indian wildlife
what cricket is to Indian sports. On the other hand it is not uncommon to come
across the line - we know so little about tigers and their prey. A mismatch if
there was one!
With
the focus on numbers in the tiger conservation ‘game’ have the numbers become
an end in themselves? A proverbial missing of the woods for the trees! And has
the number race led us on a path which is sub-optimal for tiger conservation in
the long run?
The
forest department has been petty, to put mildly, in reacting to the author’s
stand on tiger scenario in Panna. No two thoughts on this. But this surely is
neither the first, nor the last, case of authorities bestowing all support and
encouragement when a person is perceived to help and augment their position and
turning tables in no time if they envisage threat of any nature. Are there
lessons to be learnt on this front? Lessons on managing and negotiating
relationships with stake-holders, to enable conservation, in a world where each
of us is in the proverbial grey.
The book
does have its fair share of shortcomings. It misses an editor and acutely at
that. Lack of uniformity is apparent from the initial pages and only gets
jarring as the book moves ahead. The repetitions also are just too many to
state. They include lines that which talk about ‘hard and pioneering work’ done
by the author and how ‘robust science is crucial’ for tiger conservation. These
repetitions could get many a reader to skip pages or even move on to another
book. The book could be shorter by 50 – 75 pages.
Sweeping
statements could have surely been avoided. These include - ‘I do not think
there was any wildlife research project in India that did not benefit from his
support’ and ‘But in India, the Forest Department owns and manages all the
wildlife habitats, so technically it should be a much easier task’. They carry
what such statements usually do – no weight.
The
author is out of his element when he talks of people. “Tribal form the largest
community in these villages . .’ For someone based at a single landscape for few
years not even naming the tribe, leave aside stating their practices and
culture, is striking. The tone too does not help; he ‘takes time off from monitoring’
to converse with a local! People for the author appear to be more of a
hindrance to conserving tigers rather than crucial stake-holders. For
conservation in a country like ours importance of taking along people together
cannot be over emphasized.
The
data-tables appear to be in over-supply while a map giving a clear
understanding of the Panna landscape is absent.
The
author discusses protected areas during the later part of the book where he states
that ‘it is risky to entirely depend entirely on the protected area network for
conservation’. Here one agrees with him but in a few pages he moves on to say
‘at present, all our conservation eggs are in one, old, basket; protected area
network’. For a culture with conservation ethos (albeit with conservation
values disappearing fast like he has pointed out) protect areas are fairly
recent and surely not the only practice – we have a long-standing culture of
community conservation areas for example.
It is
not easy to understand how a research project can claim credit for success of a
tiger reserve. Assessment of tigers, their numbers, and saving them are two
separate aspects. To draw the author’s analogy – just as ‘we tend to confuse
science with the use of technology (camera traps and drones)’ we tend to
confuse science with conservation. Science – good or otherwise - may or may not
lead to conservation.
In the
end the book is a disappointment given the story Chundawat had on the one hand
and his knowledge of the species on the other.
ISBN
978-93-86582-65-2
First Published
2018
Pages
356
Price
899/-
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