Rising tiger numbers, deteriorating habitats

When it comes to sizing up the success of wildlife conservation in India, the focus of the government continues to be on tiger numbers. Project Tiger, launched in 1973, initiated the protection of tigers across the country. In the process, India safeguarded a vast range of natural habitats, including sub-Himalayan forests, tropical rainforests, savannahs and mangroves where tigers were found. However, in the 1990s, a wave of poaching for tiger parts, and declining habitat quality pushed tigers to the brink. From 2005 onwards, when the numbers were found to have dropped perilously low (estimated at 1,411), tiger conservation was increasingly centralised and better-funded. As of 2023, tiger numbers have been revived to roughly 3,700 and there are as many as 54 tiger reserves in the country covering more than 53,000 sq km. The popular opinion is that wildlife is doing well, as long as most tourists get to see the beast during a tiger safari. However, it is time to rethink our best-funded and most celebrated conservation strategy.
Is the obsession with tiger numbers necessarily good for biodiversity conservation? For one, the disproportionate attention to growing tiger numbers leads reserve managers to alter and manipulate habitats to favour tigers. But this type of management does not necessarily help other species that share the tiger’s habitat.
A case in point is Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan from where the rare caracal silently disappeared in early 2000s. The open savannahs and rocky stretches used by this endangered species were planted with vilayati kikar, an invasive tree that was used widely for greening at the time. Construction of numerous artificial waterholes for improving tiger sightings increased the soil moisture in this naturally dry forest, leading to changes in vegetation. As a result of these habitat manipulations, an array of species associated with the scrub-savannahs vanished over time, including the caracal and the sandgrouse. Even the once common jungle cat has become rare, according to local naturalists. On the other hand, neglect of rich microhabitats such as the riverine forest abutting perennial streams, led to the decline of the four-horned antelope. The eminent naturalist AJT Johnsingh declared this species locally extinct from Sariska in 2004.
Today, the long-term sustainability of Project Tiger has come into question as well. It’s not just how many tigers we have, but how we got there, is what we need to focus on. The process really determines the long-term sustainability of any conservation effort. And sustainability needs both ecological guidance and buy-in from multiple social strata.
The social repercussions of tiger conservation have been enormous and have led to visible local hostility in several tiger reserves. The ostensible success of Project Tiger has been at the cost of people, who lose access to resources and livelihood once the strictures come into place. Many of the people living inside tiger reserves are descendants of workers who were settled inside for commercial timber extraction, grazing and plantations, but now have no legal status. In most cases, local residents became “illegal” overnight when the tiger reserve was established. In pursuit of inviolate wildlife spaces, coercive and inadequate resettlement of villages became the norm after 1972, barring a few cases where NGOs were involved. While the relocation package has seen some improvements in 2008, it could never keep up with the changing needs of livelihood security.
Legal ambiguities also continue to dog the sustainability of tiger conservation. Today, thousands of people continue to live in fear of eviction at any time, due to the grey zone created by the contradictions between the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and the Forest Rights Act, 2006. For instance, the need for scientific evidence to establish people-free spaces (critical wildlife habitats) inside core areas of tiger reserves has been on the back-burner for many years now. The direction by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to declare critical tiger habitats is considered to be in contravention of the Forest Rights Act. Such anomalies continue to undermine conservation efforts inside protected areas.
In this situation, the recent directions of the NTCA to the states to start the process of relocation from core areas of tiger reserves, represent a short-sighted knee-jerk reaction. Numerous studies show that such large-scale evictions, without attention to socio-cultural, ecological and economic particularities can only result in continuing the trend of inadequate resettlements. Tiger reserve authorities rarely think about other options on the table — for instance, meeting local communities midway on livelihood needs, absorbing local tribes into wildlife management, and sharing tourism proceeds with local villages. In the meantime, external business interests swoop in to take advantage of burgeoning tourism.
Ironically, while much attention of NTCA is on moving out villages, tiger reserves continue to be mercilessly fragmented by rampant infrastructure development. Highways, dams and industries threaten a number of tiger reserves across the country, including the famed Corbett and Rajaji tiger reserves. Fifty-eight sq km of savannah in Panna tiger reserve will soon be submerged by the Ken-Betwa Interlinking Project. Hydroelectric projects in the vicinity of Dibang tiger reserve will likely affect tigers and their movement. Unplanned development thus threatens to create habitat islands that will not support most wild species, let alone large carnivores such as tigers.
Rapid rural-to-urban transformation also has consequences for biodiversity, but is rarely taken note of. Erstwhile agricultural habitats that once formed buffer habitats between the forest and the city, and aided wildlife dispersal, are fast disappearing. Suburban built-up spaces are closing in on not just tiger reserves, but also other protected areas. The frequent news items about tigers in suburban Gurugram, leopards in Bengaluru, and crocodiles in Vadodara, make for interesting headlines, but hide a fragile state of affairs. Both wildlife and people are facing heightened conflicts due to such situations, with losses to lives and livelihoods.
The initial vision of Project Tiger in 1972 — that the charismatic tiger is just an indicator of a complex ecosystem — seems to have been forgotten. There is little point in declaring new tiger reserves without considering the larger picture of a country where wildlife and people have traditionally shared history and space.
Ghazala Shahabuddin is an ecologist and academician working on ecological change,ornithology and wildlife conservation policy in India. She is currently a visiting professor at Ashoka University, Haryana.The views expressed are personal