India is home to the most magnificent of the animals on the earth - the Royal Bengal Tiger. The other big cats found in India are the common Leopard , Snow Leopard and the Asiatic Lion . While the Snow Leopard is confined to the upper reaches of Ladakh region , the Asiatic Lion is found in the state of Gujarat only and faces no threats as such to its survival. But among the most threatened ones are the first two - the Tiger and the common Leopard.
At the beginning of the 19th century India had a sizable population of tigers in the wild - around 80,000 to 10,0000 heads. But the sport of tiger hunting and trophy gathering, which was so very popular among the British officers in India and the local Royalty , almost decimated the tiger population in the country. This situation prevailed even after the British left the country and until India put a complete ban on hunting in 1970 and then coming out with the "Project Tiger "in 1973 to rehabilitate tiger in its natural habitat . The credit for this initiative goes to the late Prime Minister of India Mrs Indira Gandhi who really loved wildlife . Her successors didn't commit the same zeal except for the lip service but nevertheless now India has 50 tiger reserves and its tiger population is somewhat stable ; around 1900 in the wild though the official figures are a bit hyperbolic-- 2226 as per last countdown.
The wildlife experts in India are very hopeful that the Indian tiger population can make a dramatic recovery and the country could have 5000 tigers in the wild by the end of the century provided the Government walks its talk and pays proper attention to the task of tiger conservation. The leopard population is sightly better off than the tigers. There are about 10,000 leopards in the country.
Despite the optimism expressed that appears to be a difficult task. The prime reasons for it are two. First , the systematic deforestation and second, the menace of poaching which continues unabated.
The forests in India are under tremendous pressure. The rising population of the country demands more land for agriculture, industries, mines and infrastructure projects like irrigation dams and creation of new highways and roads. So the ages old forests have been cut and still are being cut to accommodate the demands of the civilization. As a result the carrying capacity of the existing tiger abodes has reduced considerably . A male tiger needs about 40-50 km of territory while females need about 20 km or so. Thus it becomes an uphill task for the new mature tigers to carve out a fresh territory of their own . Tigers being extremely territorial such attempts by a new contender lead to infighting which result either in death of a contender or moving away from the core to the buffer areas which generally have human habitation on the fringes which means more chances of man-animal contact and conflicts and ultimately death of the animal by snare, electrocution, poison or bullet. More or less the same applies to the leopards also. Their own rising numbers and pressure of tigers compel them to move out of the forest and wander near human habitations in search for food. Their small size , agility and capacity to survive on a very large and varied kind on menu makes their task easy but here again conflict with humans, sooner or later, becomes imminent. And in most of the cases it is the animal who suffers most ultimately. Under the circumstances what required is the expansion of existing buffer areas by relocating the fringe human habitations. The new highways need to be made wildlife friendly. That means lot of underpasses in the highway/road lengths so that animals could be saved from road accidents.
Poaching of tigers and leopards for their body parts and flesh sadly continues unabated and India has earned the credentials of being the biggest center and market for illegal trade in wildlife. And for that both the present wildlife legislation , which hardly has any deterrence, and the law enforcement agencies are squarely responsible. What India needs is a new Wildlife Protection Act making big cat poaching and trade of tiger -leopard body parts an offence inviting a mandatory life imprisonment.Similarly India requires separate wildlife courts for dealing with wildlife related offences. The existing system of civil courts also trying the wildlife related offences is deficient and needs an urgent change. The enormity of the wildlife crimes in the country can be judged by the fact that in the first 3 months of year 2018, (January-March) India lost 162 Leopards and 36 Tigers . Out of these, 35% of the tiger and 37% of the leopard deaths have been found to be unnatural which means poaching by various methods. These killings need to be stopped with a very heavy hand with full force of law.
Mahabharata, the Hindu scripture of India , describes a golden rule of tiger conservation. It says that "don't destroy forest with tigers and don't make forest devoid of tigers. Forests can't be saved without tigers and tigers can't live without forests because forest protects tigers and tigers protect forest".(Virat Parva)
I think this sane advice is true to India this day also as it may have been some 3000 years ago.
At the beginning of the 19th century India had a sizable population of tigers in the wild - around 80,000 to 10,0000 heads. But the sport of tiger hunting and trophy gathering, which was so very popular among the British officers in India and the local Royalty , almost decimated the tiger population in the country. This situation prevailed even after the British left the country and until India put a complete ban on hunting in 1970 and then coming out with the "Project Tiger "in 1973 to rehabilitate tiger in its natural habitat . The credit for this initiative goes to the late Prime Minister of India Mrs Indira Gandhi who really loved wildlife . Her successors didn't commit the same zeal except for the lip service but nevertheless now India has 50 tiger reserves and its tiger population is somewhat stable ; around 1900 in the wild though the official figures are a bit hyperbolic-- 2226 as per last countdown.
Despite the optimism expressed that appears to be a difficult task. The prime reasons for it are two. First , the systematic deforestation and second, the menace of poaching which continues unabated.
The forests in India are under tremendous pressure. The rising population of the country demands more land for agriculture, industries, mines and infrastructure projects like irrigation dams and creation of new highways and roads. So the ages old forests have been cut and still are being cut to accommodate the demands of the civilization. As a result the carrying capacity of the existing tiger abodes has reduced considerably . A male tiger needs about 40-50 km of territory while females need about 20 km or so. Thus it becomes an uphill task for the new mature tigers to carve out a fresh territory of their own . Tigers being extremely territorial such attempts by a new contender lead to infighting which result either in death of a contender or moving away from the core to the buffer areas which generally have human habitation on the fringes which means more chances of man-animal contact and conflicts and ultimately death of the animal by snare, electrocution, poison or bullet. More or less the same applies to the leopards also. Their own rising numbers and pressure of tigers compel them to move out of the forest and wander near human habitations in search for food. Their small size , agility and capacity to survive on a very large and varied kind on menu makes their task easy but here again conflict with humans, sooner or later, becomes imminent. And in most of the cases it is the animal who suffers most ultimately. Under the circumstances what required is the expansion of existing buffer areas by relocating the fringe human habitations. The new highways need to be made wildlife friendly. That means lot of underpasses in the highway/road lengths so that animals could be saved from road accidents.
Poaching of tigers and leopards for their body parts and flesh sadly continues unabated and India has earned the credentials of being the biggest center and market for illegal trade in wildlife. And for that both the present wildlife legislation , which hardly has any deterrence, and the law enforcement agencies are squarely responsible. What India needs is a new Wildlife Protection Act making big cat poaching and trade of tiger -leopard body parts an offence inviting a mandatory life imprisonment.Similarly India requires separate wildlife courts for dealing with wildlife related offences. The existing system of civil courts also trying the wildlife related offences is deficient and needs an urgent change. The enormity of the wildlife crimes in the country can be judged by the fact that in the first 3 months of year 2018, (January-March) India lost 162 Leopards and 36 Tigers . Out of these, 35% of the tiger and 37% of the leopard deaths have been found to be unnatural which means poaching by various methods. These killings need to be stopped with a very heavy hand with full force of law.
Mahabharata, the Hindu scripture of India , describes a golden rule of tiger conservation. It says that "don't destroy forest with tigers and don't make forest devoid of tigers. Forests can't be saved without tigers and tigers can't live without forests because forest protects tigers and tigers protect forest".(Virat Parva)
I think this sane advice is true to India this day also as it may have been some 3000 years ago.
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