Report of the Tiger Task Force - PRS

TIGER TASK FORCE REPORT JOINING THE DOTS ■greater strain: fiat forbids use of the forest, but peoplepersist in doing so, often out of sheer need. Enter thetiger, single males no fiat can tie down, trying towander from forest to forest, but unable to do sobecause the forests are shrinking and forest corridorsbrim with disaffected villages arbitrarily resettled outof the forest.The Tiger Task Force has tried then to unravelthe knot conservation policy and practice has todaytied itself in.The way aheadWith this aim in mind, the report moves into theheart of the matter. The Tiger Task Force resolves theproblem into 11 distinct, but connected, aspects (see:The way ahead, p 27-143).Just reformSariska was an eye-opener to the Task Force. Itwitnessed there absolute institutional collapse. So itis that this segment of the report begins by lookinginto institutional reform (see: The institutionalagenda, p 28-35). Following the 42 nd amendment tothe Constitution in 1976, the subject of ‘forests’ and‘wildlife’ shifted from the State list to the Concurrentlist. As the report puts it, “the Centre acquiredoverriding powers to ensure protection andpreservation of forests and wildlife”. By the 1990s,this arrangement began to function more in thebreach. Project Tiger suffered. Without direct stake inprotecting wildlife and forests, states treated these asmatters to be administered. State politicians foundprotecting huge swathes of land expensive, eveninimical to growth. The Centre had a direct stake, butwas too distant from ground realities to be effective.How should this state of affairs improve? Thereport weighs two options. One, centralise further(see: p 29-30). Two, rely on a participatoryphilosophy of institution-building. The reportendorses the latter option. Improve Centre-statecollaboration, says the report, strengtheninginstitutions at the Centre that oversee tigerprotection, and improving state capacities. Thereport says local communities must be involved inprotecting the tiger; relevant institutions, therefore,must be put in place.Among a series of recommendations (see: p 30-35) the report makes with respect to overhauling ortransforming institutions of wildlife protection, itsays that the Union ministry of environment andforests must be re-organised into two separatedepartments: that of environment and that of forests.The Project Tiger directorate must be given the legalstatus of an authority, to facilitate its work andprovide it autonomy.Must protectBut even as institutional reform is undertaken, it isclear that more needs to be done to improve theprotection for the tiger immediately (see: Theprotection agenda, p: 36-50). After visits to reservesand detailed research, it is the assessment of the TaskForce that Sariska is certainly not representative ofwhat is happening in every reserve in the country.But it is also clear that a Sariska-type situationhaunts every reserve, where protection is happening,today, against all odds.The question then is: what can be done toimprove protection? The usual answer is: more guns,more guards and more money. This approach, thereport finds, solves nothing. Sariska, in fact, hasspent more money per tiger and per sq km thanalmost all reserves in India. It has more personnel persq km and more protection camps per sq km, thanmost reserves. Still it failed (see the graphs:Allocation of funds to tiger reserves from inception to2004-2005, and Average yearly allocation of funds totiger reserves from inception to 2004-2005, p 37; seeespecially What we can learn from Sariska, p 46).The report delves into all aspects of protection(see: Funds and protection, p 37-39; Personnel andprotection, p 39-42; the vacant staff position, p 42-43; the age of the staff, p 43-44; and infrastructure: p45) to suggest each reserve must devise strategies tobetter protect the tiger. This is especially true of a)reserves in northeast India, vast and inaccessibleexcept to local communities, and b) naxalitedominatedreserves.And less crimeIt isn’t enough to merely spruce up the reservemanagement. Conservation in India today possessesan extremely watered-down mechanism to crackdown on wildlife crime. A market exists today fortiger skin and tiger parts; as tigers decline elsewherein south and southeast Asia, the danger for the tigerin India becomes more palpable. Inter-governmentalcooperation on protecting endangered species hasdriven the market underground, making it difficult todetect and so break; also, the world is failing in itsattempts to control the illicit trade: as late as 2004,shops in New York exhibited herbal medicinesclaiming to be made of tiger parts (see: The illegaltrade agenda, p 51-55).A weak enforcement mechanism thus spellsdisaster. The report takes up this question in depth(see: Domestic enforcement agenda, p 56-62). Aftershowing in great detail exactly how weak theWildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 is in terms ofenforcement (see: p 58-59), the report demands theAct’s criminal provisions be amended, and wants aExecutive summaryvii