Santanu Saraswati
Kolkata, August 4 – Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the silent of the night — Robert Blake wrote, remembering one of the most gracious animals on earth —the yellow and black striped predator.
If Blake was to be in Sunderbans today, he would have been a tad disappointed because there might not have been enough tigers to inspire him to write one of the most quoted works in the history of literature.
If experts are to be believed, Bengal’s pride, the Royal Bengal Tiger of Sunderbans, is going the Sariska way. A recent study by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) has found that the last stronghold of the Royal Bengal Tiger has less than one-third the total number of big cats, as claimed by the state forest department. Wildlife conservationists across the world are shocked with the disparity between the actual count and the number of Sunderbans big cats as provided by the department. Conservationists believe they have been conned.
The Sunderbans Tiger Reserve had been considered as a model “wildlife management”. Tiger populous, state forest department officials boasted, traversing around the marshy bushes of the world’s largest mangrove forest was around 274 after a detailed count in 2004. Their claim was based on the “pugmarks” or footprints, found in Sunderbans.
Starting from the British Broadcasting Corporation, National Geographic Society, Animal Planets and Discovery Channel, all made documentaries about the reserve’s success in preserving tigers from the rampant poaching that took down the number of tiger in Sariska to zero and plagues other national parks of the country. Apart from television channels round the globe, articles on state government’s success in protecting the Royal Bengal tigers appeared in the newspapers like, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, the Manchester Guardian, the Sunday Times of London, as well as The Washington Times.
But the team of experts of Kolkata's esteemed Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) headed by Debashis Sengupta; say a re-examination of the same data shows only about 64 tigers in the mangrove forest of Sunderbans. The world-renowned institute that was assigned by the state forest department for developing software, Pugmarks Analysis and Graphic Handling Software (PAGHS) to make the ongoing tiger census accurate, revealed that it might be of any reason the Sunderbans is going the Sariska way. And not only Sunderbans, all tiger reserves are facing threat of illegal poaching.
From every tiger reserve across the country comes evidence that the population is in freefall. Similipal, in Orissa, was one of the first reserves to be established by Project Tiger in the 1970s. Five years ago, according to the 2001 census, it could boast of 99 tigers. Today, no more than eight survive. The number of tigers in Ranthambhore, Rajasthan - a popular wildlife tourist destination - has shrunk from 35 to 15; and Sariska, which was home to 22 tigers in 2001, now has none. Even the wildlife reserves of North Bengal—Jaldapara, Gorumara, Mahananda, Rajabhatkhawa and Buxa—witnessed a steady fall in the number of tiger population from 35 to just four.
Increasing demands upon the tiger's habitat have undoubtedly contributed to the decline, but the biggest threats come from poaching and the illegal trade of tiger skins, and the lack of political will at the highest level to stamp them out.
“The tiger is vanishing and no one is listening,” said one of expert team member of ISI on the basis of anonymity. “Official numbers have been fudged for years, hiding the true extent of the crisis until now. It is only the extinction of the tiger from a prime reserve like Sariska that has forced bureaucrats and politicians to acknowledge the problem,” he added.
“For validation of the software, the state forest department provided us with 1000 pugmarks out of 1402 which was collected by them during the 2004 tiger census. We then went for a trial run with that data, and surprised to find that if our software is to be believed, there are only 64 Royal Bengal tigers—just one-third of the total 274, what the state forest department was claiming for so long. It predicts that the tiger could have disappeared from India within 15 years. It is the most serious crisis yet to face the world's most charismatic carnivore. However, the state government is reluctant to acknowledge the extent of the danger,” Sengupta said.
If the state forest department census reports are to be believed, there were 254 Royal Bengal tigers in the marshy mangrove forest of Sunderbans during 2001, a rise from the total number 156, which was counted in 1998. Tiger population further rise to 274, as the state forest and the Sunderban development department claimed to implement all sorts of conservation method. But ISI’s revelation came just as a bolt from the blue for the state forest department, which, till date, used to take the pride of being a unique tiger reserve in the country where tiger population registered a growth, unlikely other reserves in the country.
However, the state government has a different story to tell. State forest minister, Ananta Ray, observed that the presumption was that the pugmarks of two tigers are mostly different. From pugmark impressions, some parameters are calculated like the distance of centre of each toe. Then these parameters of two pugmarks were compared to find out whether they belong to a single or two different tigers. However, this manual exercise is not full proof and there is every possibility that there might be some duplication due to soil factors.
During 2006, the Government of India decided to make an estimation of tiger population throughout the country using more developed technology, which will be conducted in four phases. The respective forest department officials, Wildlife Institute, Dehradun would conduct the whole counting process in collaboration with the officials of the Project Tiger Directorate, Government of India.
Ray said that for a difficult and unique ecological system in Sunderbans it as decided that the whole estimation process would involve computer analysis of the pugmarks, satellite link radio collaring of tigers and camera trap method. “The reason is no single method could be considered as sufficient and full proof for estimation of tiger population in Sunderbans’ difficult terrain,” said Atanu Raha, principal chief conservator of forest, Government of West Bengal.
He informed that these methods have been used even on mountain lion in the USA, Jaguars in South America, tigers in India and South East Asia, and on wolves and bears in North America. The new methodology would give 95 per cent interval of statistical confidence of tiger population in the country.
Raha said that as part of the combined methodology, the ISI was asked to develop computer software for analysis of the pugmark impressions. The experts of ISI were asked to develop the methodology, which can be finalised only after validation of the same by known data. “The data would be provided by us. Whatever provided before was, only for helping them to test their software. Not for validation,” Raha added.
Now ISI is in the process of development of the methodology with some data, which has been supplied. “How come they are publishing something for which they were never told for? This is completely baseless. We have already written to the ISI authority charging them with breach of confidentiality. They simply spreaded a fact that is baseless. And their child-like behaviour put the state government in soup. We are getting endless calls from media houses. This is simply ridiculous!” the PCF rued.
But Sengupta and his men are not ready to accept the state government’s version of the story. They had expressed doubts that the Royal Bengal tigers are not as safe in the forest as its management claimed. Noting that tiger numbers were plummeting in other reserves, they pressured Bengal wildlife authorities for the review of the data.
The experts also observed that the chance of holidaymakers seeing Royal Bengal tiger in the wild has almost disappeared as the validation test of the newly developed software revealed that the Sunderbans tiger population has witnessed a stiff fall in four years.
State forest department agreed that moulds of the pugmarks were sent to the ISI. After studying the marks, researchers said the Sunderbans held no more than 64 tigers.
Valmik Thapar, a member of a Tiger Task Force established by the prime minister to monitor conservation efforts, said the lower figure did not surprise him. “We believe poaching of tigers has been going on in Sunderbans for one or two decades, and for many years we have been saying we did not trust the figure regularly presented by the reserve's managers. To earn praise for their work and to save their skin, the wardens have been presenting inflated numbers,” Thapar said.
Experts like Thapar believed that the last census report was full of flaws. Before publishing the census report in 2004, the state government also included the tiger population that migrate from other part of the mangrove forest in Bangladesh but return to their original place of living after hunting from this side. “Forest department claim of 274 big cats got boasted after the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest and the Project Tiger officials, supported that claim. The Project Tiger officials even claimed of having the photographs of all the 274 big cats roaming in the largest mangrove forest, what was more surprising than the claim,” he added by informing that a tiger requires nine sq km area for living. As human intervention is growing in the protected 2,585 sq km area of the Tiger Reserve, space is not enough to sustain 250 plus tigers.
The beleaguered Sunderban Tiger Reserve authority is sticking to its estimate, saying the ISI's analysis was inaccurate. Pradip Vyas, the tiger reserve's director, called the ISI figure “totally unacceptable.”
“The software they used in analysing the data we provided was not that efficient,” Vyas said. “We think it could not differentiate between various pug marks and threw up an erratic figure.” But the institute says the software it used was reliable within five percentage points.
Yet even as the true extent of the crisis emerges, the state government is under pressure from industrial and mining lobbies that are eyeing up construction projects in prime tiger land.
Meanwhile, the poaching continues unabated. Earlier this year, four tigresses were killed in north Bengal region, and few months back two tiger skins were seized on the Nepalese border.
With tigers becoming increasingly scarce, the potential damage to tourism is incalculable. “Apart from the Taj Mahal, it is hard to think of a more powerful national symbol than the Royal Bengal tiger,” said Thapar.
Yet the government, the tiger reserve authorities and even the tourism providers themselves have almost completely failed to recognise tourism as an important tool in conserving tigers.
Conservationists believe that tourists could help by paying a more realistic price to visit tiger reserves, with the extra revenue going directly towards their conservation.
Tigers are now about as scarce as Africa's mountain gorillas. Yet, while tourists pay £225 for a permit to watch gorillas, the charges to see wild tigers in India are just Rs 25 [30p] for Indians and Rs 250 [£2.90] for overseas visitors.
The irony of the situation is that the initial success of Project Tiger was due almost entirely to the commitment and integrity of forest officers such as Kailash Sankhala and Singh Rathore, of Ranthambhore, who received full government backing. Today scientists and tiger conservationists in the private sphere are not just ignored and excluded from the jungles, but are vindictively persecuted for exposing the truth, thinks a member of the expert group of ISI.
He observed that figures are fudged. Tigers are being poached in full knowledge of rangers, guards and villagers. Poachers are still active and are being helped by forest officials. Everybody has some kind of interests in tiger poaching. Villagers, who don't have a standard source of income, are the basic killers, for money. They trap tigers and kill by poisoning or shooting at close range, for only Rs 100 per tiger. EOM (2074)
Box: Tiger Population in Indian Reserves
Name of the forest reserve Population in 2001 Population in
2004
Sunderbans Tiger Reserve, West Bengal 254 274
Similipal Tiger Reserve, Orissa 99 8
Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan 35 15
Sariska National Park, Rajasthan 22 0
Jaldapara, Gorumara, Buxa, Mahananda, Rajabhatkhawa, North Bengal 35 4
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