Report of the Tiger Task Force - PRS

TIGER TASK FORCE REPORT JOINING THE DOTS ■instance, forest villages located within the park havemuch less impact on its degradation as compared tothe excessive pressure placed by villagers outside thepark. 14 These findings need to be considered by thegovernment of Maharashtra when it works on itsproposal to relocate the villages.But this is not to say that human activities, giventhe high dependence, will not impinge on the qualityof the habitat. The question is to understand thenature of the intervention and what can be done tomitigate or substitute its impact.For instance, it is clear that the use of non-timberforest produce is critical to the livelihood security ofmillions in the country. Economist Kanchan Choprahas estimated that in certain areas such producecontributes up to 40 per cent of the household income.The issue then is to determine howunsustainable this use is and what can be done toimprove resource utilisation and management.Researchers Ghazala Shahabuddin and SoumyaPrasad have put together key studies that assessthe ecological sustainability of such extraction inIndia to analyse trends. They find the studies presenta mixed picture — in some studies researchers findheavy extraction of non-timber forest produce leadsto reduced regeneration and resource degradation.But there are also cases where there is no visibleimpact of low- and high-intensity harvesting.Many studies indicate that the method ofextraction — setting fire, removal of reproductivespecies, destructive harvesting — is often muchmore damaging than the quantum of extraction.In certain studies, researchers did find thecompetition between humans and wild animals overminor forest produce adversely impacted the latter.For example, a study found that harvesting the fruitof Artocarpus sp did deprive the lion tailed macaqueof its diet.But it was also noted in many cases that if themethod of extraction took into account the foodhabits of other species, this conflict could be avoided— harvesting fallen fruit and leaving the rest foranimals.The problem is, as the researchers of this reviewconclude, there is “scant, mostly anecdotalinformation on the ecological sustainability ofextraction of non timber forest produce in India”.The available literature suggests species andpopulations differ in their response to harvesting.But unsustainable extraction will depend on theharvesting technique adopted, the extent ofextraction and the plant part used. They concludethat much more research is required before it can beclearly understood to what extent and in whatways livelihoods based on these products can becompatible with conservation. 15Legal vs illegal: what is more sustainable?If the challenge is conservation, then policy mustbe designed to practice sustainable resourcemanagement. In this context, it becomes important tounderstand if illegal use, in vogue because of currentpolicy, is more sustainable than legal use, whichcould be practiced if policy was modified forconservation’s sake.Unfortunately, there is little analysis availablewith park managers or conservationists aboutresource use and its impacts. Therefore, policy isdesigned in the absence of data.Take the issue of two reservoirs — one in MadhyaPradesh on the Tawa river, within the Satpura riverreserve and the other on the Pench river, inMaharashtra. The reservoirs are in the core of reservesand therefore, by policy, all use is banned.Conservation demands this. But compare whathappens when use is legal and when it is illegal.Tawa: legal but under threatIn Tawa, 44 displaced villages took up an alternatesource of livelihood and have managed resources in asustainable manner for over 9 years now. In 1974, the21,000-hectare reservoir was handed over to the stategovernment in 1975 for fish production and thento the Madhya Pradesh Fisheries DevelopmentCorporation till 1994. It was auctioned to a privatecontractor for a year after that. The reservoir was opento all from 1995 to 1996 and then handed over to a cooperativeafter a prolonged struggle. Because of a lackof any source of livelihood after the area came withinnational park limits, the displaced people demandedexclusive fishing rights to the reservoir. So came intobeing the Tawa Matsya Sangh.Initially, the Tawa Matsya Sangh got fishingrights for five years in 1996, which was laterextended. The co-operative is constituted solely oflocal communities and is two-tiered. At the locallevel, it started off with 33 primary co-operativesocieties, which undertook the actual fishing andthen handed the catch over to the second level of afederation that took care of marketing, transport andsale of fish, stocking of fish seed, and supply of netsand boats to fishermen.Tawa serves as a good example because over theyears it was under state, private and then cooperativecontrol and the trends clearly show that the cooperativeregime has been able to manageproduction, maintenance of stock, employment andincome generation most efficiently.Sustainable productionA report by the Ahmedabad-based Centre forThe way ahead 111