Expert raises ecology doubt on tiger park

G.S. MUDUR
Habitat under doubt
New Delhi, Jan. 15: A government move to declare a wildlife sanctuary in southern Karnataka as a new tiger reserve is unscientific and reflects arbitrary decision-making on tiger reserves, a leading wildlife scientist has said.

The Union cabinet in principle approved on Friday the creation of five new tiger reserves — the Biligiri Ranganatha Temple (BRT) sanctuary in Karnataka, Ratapani in Madhya Pradesh, Sunpeda inOrissa, Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh, and Mukundara hills in Rajasthan.

“The choice defies ecology-based science,” said Ulhas Karanth, director of the Centre for Wildlife Studies, Bangalore, who has conducted research on the ecology of tigers and prey-predator population ecology in several parts of the country.

India’s tiger conservation programme launched in 1972-73 with nine reserves covering about 1,400sqkm has expanded over the years, and now has 39 reserves over an area of 46,390sqkm.

Project Tiger is believed to have helped increase the tiger population from less than 1,000 in the early-1970s to about 1,400 as estimated in 2008.

“This process of continuous expansion of tiger reserve areas appears to have become rather ad hoc,” Karanth said. “You can’t just go on adding areas. Some areas might also need to be deleted from the list of tiger reserves.”

Karanth said areas now devoid of tigers such as Panna in Madhya Pradesh or Sariska in Rajasthan or remote forests such as Indravati in Chhattisgarh, located in areas of civil unrest where wildlife staff do not venture, remain labelled as tiger reserves.

A tiger reserve gets significant extra funds through Project Tiger — and sections of wildlife researchers appear concerned that listing areas with unviable tiger populations or areas that cannot be adequately managed only allows scarce conservation resources to be spent on areas that are unlikely to actually benefit tigers.

Karanth said the move to declare the Biligiri Ranganatha Temple hills sanctuary as a new tiger reserve is an example of arbitrary decision-making that has ignored strong ecological arguments in favour of Kudremukh, also in Karnataka.

The proposed BRT hills reserve is adjacent to Bandipur and Nagarahole — two reserves with high density of tiger population. Kudremukh, on the other hand, is located at a distance in Karnataka’s central Western Ghat region. “Instead of having all tigers in a single corner of the state, it makes better sense to have them in different areas,” Karanth said.

The Biligiri Ranganatha Temple hill area is also ecologically similar to Bandipur-Nagarahole, which has deciduous forests, while Kudremukh has tropical evergreen forests that are also rich in other species. A tiger reserve in Kudremukh would also help conserve its biodiversity, he said.

But wildlife officials and other conservation scientists say demarcating new areas as tiger reserves only helps increase the level of protection to already existing tiger populations in those areas. “We have to take a long-term view,” said a conservation scientist.

“The Biligiri Ranganatha Temple hills sanctuary already has an estimated population of about 35 tigers and appears able to support double the number,” said Milind Pariwakam, a manager of tiger conservation initiatives with the Wildlife Trust of India, a non-government organisation.