gINKgo | RARE Newsletter | Celebrating 50 years of Project Tiger | Vol 79 | March 2023 |
March -
2023
Celebrating 50 years of Project Tiger
An Unlikely Miracle
In 1966 the famous naturalist tea planter E.P. Gee had claimed that from 40,000 tigers at the turn of the century, India’s tiger population had collapsed catastrophically to a mere 4000 in just 65 years. And even that latter number probably an overestimate. While the sport hunting of India’s rulers – Native and British – is the convenient scapegoat for this crisis, in reality it had been a long time coming. The British policy of placing a bounty on tigers had triggered the initial destruction with tigers being killed at industrial scale using every conceivable method. But the primary and proximate cause lay in the exuberant profligacy with which newly independent India put its forests – freed from rigid colonial protection – to the axe, fire and plough; and its wildlife to the sword – or rather the crop protection gun.
The numbers are staggering. Between 1947 and 1970 India had lost almost 10 million hectares – 100,000 square km – of forest. And the indiscriminate licensing of every form of crop protection gun had led to such mayhem that the predominant sound of the night time jungle during the 1960’s was of gunfire. The first survey of tigers conducted in 1969 counted 1876 tigers – almost certainly on the high side. By some estimates tiger numbers had dropped to below a 1000. The tiger in India, it seemed was heading in the same direction as its cousins in the rest of Asia – virtual extinction except in tiny fragments of protected forest.
The unimaginable conservation miracle that brought India’s wildlife and wild lands back from the edge of extinction was wrought by Indira Gandhi pushing through first, the ban on hunting in July 1970, followed by the passing of the Wildlife Protection Act (1972) and finally the launch of Project Tiger. It is certainly nobody’s contention that Project Tiger has been an unqualified success. Indeed the precipitous decline in tiger numbers by the end of the 1990’s and early 2000’s with local extinctions in several famous Tiger Reserves revealed the flaws of control and unscientific management – including the unreliable pug mark census that had been flagged by Dr. Ullas Karanth – India’s foremost tiger biologist.
The fact remains that the WLPA (1972) and Project Tiger have lit such a spark in the Indian consciousness that no government would dare reverse our conservation trajectory however much they might tinker with the details. Incredibly, 1.4 billion humans, crowded into a land-mass one-third the size of the USA co-exist with the largest surviving populations of some of the most dangerous and economically damaging wildlife on Earth.
Which brings us to the one great omission in our conservation architecture – local communities. It is the people of the forest edge who truly bear the Cost of Conservation – by way of increasing crop loss, livestock loss and even loss of life. It is here that the wildlife tourism industry – vilified by many who have no better ideas to offer – comes into its own, offering the only economic lifeline to these forgotten communities. It would be no exaggeration to say that the wildlife tourism industry of today is a child of Project Tiger, prior to which only the hunting companies existed.
While it was Project Tiger’s early successes that kick-started this fledgling industry, it became apparent as time went on and numbers began to increase exponentially, that a flourishing tourism ecosystem around a park, providing the only avenue for jobs and business opportunities legally permitted, created the local constituency for conservation amongst the very people who are otherwise excluded and disadvantaged by the legal provisions of our conservation Acts. This is helping significantly by alleviating the loss and harm to local communities.
Today it is apparent that where tourism flourishes, wildlife flourishes. This does not mean however that all is well with the wildlife tourism industry. Far from it. In many places tourism is proving to be a double-edged sword and the exclusion of meaningful community participation due to our restrictive laws remains a weakness and an aggravation. But that is a subject for another day.
As Project Tiger turns 50, this is a fitting moment to celebrate one of the greatest and most unlikely conservation success stories anywhere.
RARE India is a collection of some of the finest boutique hotels with its heart set around conscious travel - palace stays, wildlife lodges, homestays and retreats in the sub-continent. Our hotels are often set away from the repetitive and regular routes, aspire to tread softly on the land they are set in and preserve the innocence of the destination. In short, you have a ’RARE’ collection of hotels and experiences that offer a variety of options for the responsible traveller.
