CANADIANS MUST HELP SAVE THE TIGER
QUESTION: Will Earth's tigers survive in the wild?
ANSWER: Only if a huge conservation effort ignites now!
CIDA sponsors WCWC-Tiger Trust project to help endangered tiger survive in India
Less than a century ago, nearly all of India was a tigerland. It was one of Earth's richest ecological units, with one of the widest varieties of flora and fauna found anywhere in the world. There were no physical barriers to the free flow of Bengal tiger genes. Then there were more than 50,000 tigers. Now there are less than 3,000 tigers left in India, of which only about one-third live in "protected" areas.
Kanha National Park, established in 1934, is one of the largest tiger reserves in India. Yet even here, tigers are not completely safe.
Kanha has a 900 square kilometre core reserve area with no human habitation except for about 150 unarmed forest guards who live in isolated huts. This core area is surrounded by a 1,000 square kilometre buffer zone, including 185 villages. Twenty-two of these villages were established recently as people were relocated from the park's core area. About 100 tigers currently live in Kanha. Their prey base includes 10,000 chital deer, wild boar and other ungulate species. The vegetation in the park comprises mixed deciduous forest interspersed with grassland. The wildlife in the park is totally protected--at least on paper. In fact, Kanha is one of India's best protected tiger reserves. No hunting of any species, nor cutting of trees, nor grazing of cattle are allowed. But these activities do occasionally happen. Most of the pressures come from villagers living near Kanha who currently do not see the park benefitting them.
About 90,000 people live in the buffer zone surrounding Kanha--an overall population density of about 90 people per square kilometre. The average size of each village is about 500. Public facilities within the buffer zone are rudimentary. There is generally one elementary school per village. There are only three medical clinics in the entire buffer area, all of which are minimally staffed, under-equipped and inaccessible to many villagers. The predominant fuel is wood. Villagers walk great distances daily to gather fuelwood from the dwindling forests that still exist within the buffer zone. Some gather wood illegally from the park's core area. The only significant dry-season agricultural activity is the raising of goats and cattle, whose populations rival or exceed the number of people in the region. Because of the intensive grazing and fuelwood gathering activities, the buffer zone resembles a semi- desert which stops abruptly at the park boundary. The area inside the park is in stark contrast, a lush forest oasis.
GOING, GOING--
but if we take drastic conservation measures now
--NOT GONE
1. Caspian Tiger (extinct 1970s)
2. Bengal Tiger (approx. 3,000 remain today)
3. Indo-Chinese Tiger (approx. 300 remain today)
4. Sumatran Tiger (approx. 400 remain today)
5. Javan Tiger (extinct 1980s)
6. Bali Tiger (extinct 1940s)
7. South Chinese Tiger (approx. 20 remain today)
8. Siberian Tiger (approx. 250 remain today)
Red is range of the tiger
The current socio-economic situation exerts tremendous counter-conservation pressures on the Kanha tiger reserve. Most villagers living in the buffer zone are hostile to the park. This is partly due to the fact that the national government has not kept all of its promises regarding compensation and mitigation to the transplanted villagers. But also, it's the simple fact that the park is like a feast laid out on a table surrounded by hungry people who are forbidden to touch.
When villagers attempt to enter the park to cut wood, graze cattle or kill animals, it is the forest guard's job to tell them to cease and desist. Over the last few years, several forest guards have been killed by villagers, at least one by stoning, another by the wood cutters' saws, and others by poachers' bullets. Most of the forest guards have no communication equipment (no telephone, radio or even walkie-talkie), no weapons to back up anti-poaching enforcement or for self-defence and no vehicles, except perhaps for rickety bicycles. Some guards don't even have shoes.
It is well known that outside agents have offered villagers about $50 and perhaps a bottle of whisky to kill a tiger.
Given the villagers' average $30 per month income, it is a major temptation. Most villagers do not know that one dead tiger's parts transformed into traditional Chinese medicines may be worth $80,000 or more in the consuming country. The contracted poacher in India is supplied with firearms, wire snares, poisoned baits, and sometimes jugs of powerful insecticides to dump into waterholes to kill animals indiscriminately in hopes of bagging a tiger.
Currently, villagers who live in the buffer zone around Kanha National Park do not benefit significantly from the ecotourism trade that has slowly developed over the last few years. Some villagers are hired as safari lodge attendants and forest guards. But by and large, villagers regard the park as a rich foreigners' playground and see themselves as being left in the dust of safari jeeps.
This makes the task faced by tiger conservationists complex. One thing is for certain. Whether or not anti-poaching efforts succeed, unless the villagers living in the buffer zone surrounding the tiger reserves begin to realize benefits from the parks and become staunch tiger defenders themselves, there is little hope for the tiger.
Over the past year, with the generous support of a $75,000 Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) grant from the Canadian government, Western Canada Wilderness Committee (WCWC), Canada's largest membership-based wilderness conservation group, partnered with Tiger Trust India (TTI) on a project to help save India's endangered tigers. Tiger Trust is a non-profit society dedicated to preserving India's wildlife by enhancing public environmental awareness, conducting research, encouraging eco-tourism and promoting rural development that conserves nature. Tiger Trust has a tiger safari lodge at the southern entrance to Kanha National Park.
WCWC's BET'R campaigner poses with live tiger for the cover story "Bloody Superstition" published in the April 24th, 1997 Georgia Straight.
As part of this collaborative project, WCWC, well known fox its mass public education campaigns within Canada, is publishing this educational newspaper as well as a tiger poster aimed at increasing public awareness outside of India of the need for more active support for tiger conservation. WCWC campaigner Anthony Marr, who travelled to India and visited Kanha National Park and some of the buffer zone villages, has created a tiger preservation slide show. In the spring of 1997, he presented his show to thousands of school children in the Greater Vancouver region.
Most of the effort and funds in the WCWC-TTI project are earmarked for Tiger Trust's on-the-ground activities to establish core support amongst the local people for protection of Kanha Park and preservation of the tiger. Tiger Trust is donating an outbuilding on the grounds of their lodge to be developed into a free medical clinic for use by the ten closest villages. The clinic will be staffed by one volunteer doctor (knowledgable about the traditional medicinal plants that grow in Kanha) and several volunteer nurses. The clinic's waiting room will also serve as an education centre, stocked with books, magazines and posters, and equipped with a video machine and a continuous-running slide show explaining the importance of Kanha Park to local water supplies, soil conservation and community health. Next to the clinic, Tiger Trust is building out of local resources a demonstration bio-gas plant (sufficient for six families) to show a practical alternative to firewood.
Tiger Trust is also developing a training/educational program for park guides, village teachers and park visitors and is donating approximately 200 free Kanha tour packages to teachers and students in the surrounding villages to help them become more knowledgeable and appreciative of the Park and its wildlife. In the effort to build support for the Park, Tiger Trust is also producing and publishing 5,000 copies of a tiger preservation comic book for free distribution to villagers.
This WCWC-TTI project in Kanha is only a beginning. The ultimate success of the campaign-to save India's endangered tigers-will require a sustained effort supported by major funding in order to involve other villages as well as other tiger reserves in India. The result will be more than just a change in local peoples' attitudes towards tigers and parks. It will include a changed, more sustainable way of life.
