Report of the Tiger Task Force - PRS

■ JOINING THE DOTS TIGER TASK FORCE REPORTNOTE OF DISSENT BY VALMIK THAPAR, MEMBER ON THE DRAFT REPORT OF THE TASK FORCEFOR REVIEWING THE MANAGEMENT OF TIGER RESERVESI. The long term survival of tigers will depend on the single most important factor namely inviolateprotected areas A certain minimum area has to be managed exclusively in its natural form for the tiger.The area may be ?%, 1% or 2% or more of the geographical area of this country depending on the politicalmandate to do so. Let the principle of this be applied in the interest of the tiger. After all it is these areaswhich provide the water, food and ecological security of the country. On the other hand the entire reportis based on a totally different strategy namely that:“There are two essential strategies here:1. The habitat must be shared between the people and the tigers, so that both can coexist, asthey must. The poverty of one, otherwise, will be the destruction of the other.”(Page 4, Chapter 02 – A Paradigm Change – Making Conservation Work)II.The concept paper on “A Paradigm Change – “Making Conservation work” and the chapter on Coexistenceof people raise serious issues that impact on the entire report. Let us not forget that the taskforce was mandated to suggest measures to save the tiger from vanishing off the face of India. It was aresponse to an ongoing tiger crisis. Unfortunately, in its eagerness to find ‘eternal solutions’ for allproblems afflicting the country at one go, the Task Force appears to have lost this mission-focus and hasgone adrift trying to find solutions to all the problems of inequity and social injustice that afflict India. Inthe process the interests of the tiger’s survival has been relegated and lost sight of.III. It is imperative to note that all the ‘potential tiger habitats in the protected areas of India, add up only to100,000 sq. km. and populations where reproduction is taking place now occupy less than 20,000 sq. km.This is a relatively small fraction of India’s huge rural poor population is exposed to tigers. The premisethat there are vast areas of India where tigers and people must be forced to co-exist through someinnovative scheme of increased use of underutilized forest resources by involving the local people doesnot make any sense to tiger conservation especially when the human and cattle populations areconstantly rising. The fact is each tiger must eat 50 cow-sized animals a year to survive, and if you put itamidst cows and people, the conflict will be eternal and perennial. Tigers continue to lose out as they didin Sariska (and over 95% of their former range in India). The premise of continued co-existence over vastlandscapes where tigers thrive ecologically, as well people thrive economically, is an impractical dream,with which I totally disagree. Such dreaming cannot save the tiger in the real world. On the other handsuch a scenario will be a “no win” situation for everyone and result in further declines and the eventualextinction of tiger populations Alternatives where tigers have priority in identified protected reservesand people have priority outside them have to be explored fast and implemented expeditiously. Thereis no other way. The present concept of a ‘new’ coexistence is an utopian idea and impractical and willnot work. This I am absolutely clear about.Blaming strict nature reserves and conservation laws where tigers have priority, for all the povertyand inequity driven ills that plague our vast country is pointless polemics: These ills are consequences ofthe failure of development, economics and politics of the country and society as a whole and cannot besimple-mindedly blamed on conservationists.IV. In the chapter 5.8 “The Co-Existence Agenda”, it is stated that:“Exacerbating tensions with protectionIf this was not bad enough, recent events have made things even more unbearable for the people wholive in these reserves.In February 2000, the Amicus Curiae (in the omnibus forest case ongoing in the Supreme Court),had filed an application seeking ….. The court in its order dated 14.2.2000 ordered that“in the meantime, we restrain the respondents from ordering the removal of dead, diseased,dying or wing-fallen trees, drift wood and grasses etc. from the national park or game sanctuaryor forest.”164 Annexures