Wild about tigers
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It will not be easy to double the number of tigers in the wild in 12 years. Yet, a global campaign launched in the Chinese Year of the Tiger seeks to do just that by 2022, the next Chinese Year of the Tiger. Ambitious it may be, but the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) campaign Tx2 — Double or Nothing plans to better conserve tigers in the wild — not in zoos or farms.
It’s going to be a Herculean task for sure. “Conserving tigers is not like poultry farming,” says wildlife biologist Dr. Prahlad Yonzon of Resources Himalaya, a non-governmental organisation. “It’s going to be an extremely challenging task.” At the turn of the last century, over 100,000 tigers — of eight subspecies — roamed the planet. Only 3,200 tigers survive in the wild today.
Nearing extinction
When we observed the last Year of the Tiger 12 years ago in 1998, between 5,000 to 7,000 tigers survived in the wild. I was a cub reporter back then, covering a range of socio-political and environmental issues. The conservation fraternity, chiefly the WWF, was urging governments and people to do more to save the critically endangered big cats.
Then, experts’ prognosis was bleak. They suggested that “only a few hundred tigers would be left in the wild in a handful of reserves by 2010, the next Year of the Tiger.” That turned out to be true. Reason? After the 1998 hoopla, things got back to square one — poaching and illegal trade in tiger organs continue unabated, and the wild tiger population declined by 40 percent during the 12 years.
Out of the 3,200 tigers in the 13 tiger range countries, Nepal has 121 adult wild tigers left with around 30 lost in the last five years thanks to poaching. India has 1,400 left; it lost 32 tigers to poachers in 2009. Nepali officials take pride in the fact that the number of tigers didn’t drop drastically despite the decade-long conflict that the nation endured. Yet conservationists are worried.
Why save tigers?
Yes, why worry about the big cats when humanity is faced with much bigger problems? That’s the question asked by all and sundry. In Nepal, these are common questions: “Why write about rhinos and tigers when people are confronted with so many problems? Why bother about wildlife when our politics is not right, when we are facing conflict?”
The word is: Endangered species of flora and fauna need more attention and subsequent protection. Together with humans and other species, they form the planet’s web of life; totally inter-related and interdependent; each incomplete without the other just like the five fingers in our hand. And the tiger remains at the top of the food chain, devouring everything from peacocks and monkeys to buffaloes and humans for survival.
In the healthiest locales, though, it loves to hunt deer that live on green grass, fresh air and fresh water. It’s important to conserve all the species in the food chain. And it’s important to conserve the tiger’s habitat: pristine tropical forests such as the Tarai Arc Landscape spread cross north India and south Nepal.
What has Nepal done?
In recent decades, a lot has been done in Nepal to protect nature. When wild tigers numbered less than 100 in the 1970s, Chitwan National Park was set up; Bardia National Park and Parsa and Shukla Phanta wildlife reserves followed later. Each nature reserve — or tiger reserve, so to say — adjoins similar reserves across the border in India.
Even as the human population explodes across the Tarai Arc, the good news is this: The parks and reserves are connected by several green corridors which wildlife like the tiger use to move around and travel across a much larger eco-region spread between the Yamuna River in the west and the Bagmati in the east.
If green corridors such as community- or state-owned forest patches can be preserved and further developed between the almost isolated nature reserves, wildlife like elephants, tigers and rhinos can move freely from, say, Rajaji-Corbett in Uttarakhand to Dudhwa-Bardia, and from Katarniaghat in Uttar Pradesh to Chitwan-Parsa. Sounds like a dream, yet that’s within the realm of possibility. If only Nepal and India could work together.
If the number of tigers in the wild are to be doubled, that dream must come true. For experts agree that the Tarai Arc does have the potential to multiply tigers. After the much-publicised Kalapatthar (Everest base camp) cabinet meeting, the government unveiled plans to set up new protected areas, including Banke National Park, east of Bardia. The beauty of Banke is that it’s right in the middle of the Tarai Arc Landscape.
Yet, concerns remain. Pointing out that paperwork and conferences alone won’t do, experts say the government must do something to end the conflict between parks and people, the conflict between tigers and villagers. In recent years, dozens of villagers have fallen prey to marauding tigers. “But what has the government done?” asks Yonzon of Resources Himalaya. “Has it compensated the victims on time?”
Tiger consumers
Most importantly, as the Chinese demand for tiger merchandise grows in the Year of the Tiger, Nepal must ensure its tigers aren’t poached; and that its territory is no longer used as a transit to trade tiger and other wildlife products. Having roped in like-minded conservationists — and having added some glamour to the campaign by appointing Miss Nepal as its conservation ambassador — the WWF campaign has got off to a flying start. Congratulations!
In the Year of the Tiger, the WWF plans to prod Nepal into signing separate deals with India and China to end the continuing illegal trade in tiger and other wildlife organs besides helping Nepal to set up a Wildlife Crime Control Bureau. In September, the WWF in conjunction with the World Bank and other partners are planning to get the heads of state of the 13 tiger range countries and the tiger consuming countries together in Vladivostok, Russia. There, a renewed high-level global commitment to conserve tigers in the wild is expected.
As the world talks tiger, it’s time to end the conflict between parks and people, end poaching and illegal trade, create a conservation-friendly environment, develop wildlife corridors and conserve the Tarai Arc. Only that can make a difference in 2022.
(The author is a BBC Nepali journalist)
nepal.surendra@gmail.com
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