The ongoing Centrally Sponsored Scheme of Project Tiger requires enhanced allocation towards creation of inviolate space for tigers through relocation / rehabilitation of people living in the core/critical tiger habitat areas, as notified by tiger States. The details of central assistance provided to States in this regard during the current Plan period are at Annexure-I.
The Ministry of Environment and Forests has advised the States for allowing the use of Net Present Value (NPV) money under CAMPA, for various activities, which interalia, include rehabilitation of people from protected areas as well.
This information was given by the Minister of State for Environment and Forests (independent charge) Shri Jairam Ramesh in a written reply to a question by Dr T N Seema in Rajya Sabha today.
Details of funds released under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme of “Project Tiger” during the current Plan period for village relocation
Rs. in Lakhs
Sl. No.
Name of Tiger Reserve
2007-08
2008-09
2009-10
2010-11
1
Manas (Assam)
0.00
646.0945
0.00
0.00
2
Achanakmar
(Chhattisgarh)
0.00
0.00
1000.00
723.98
3
Nagarahole/Bandipur
(Karnataka)
980.19
0.00
0.00
0.00
4
Bandhavgarh (MP)
277.3668
1580.00
0.00
0.00
5
Kanha (MP)
0.00
1390.00
3.12
140.00
6
Satpura (MP)
76.00
1024.49
1035.00
0.00
7
Panna (MP)
1577.53
1824.63
0.00
0.00
8
Dampa (Mizoram)
0.00
0.00
2043.00
0.00
9
Similipal (Orissa)
0.00
350.00
0.00
610.00
10
Ranthambhore (Rajasthan)
50.00
464.00
10400.00
0.00
11
Sariska (Rajasthan0
50.00
1879.50
0.00
1860.00
12
Mudumalai
(Tamil Nadu)
0.00
100.00
0.00
200.00
13
Corbett (Uttarakhand)
10.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
TOTAL
3021.0868
9258.7145
14481.120
3533.98
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Great Initiative: Mobile Health Unit by Satpuda Foundation
Volunteering at the health camp in Tadoba Tiger Reserve
This is a report by volunteer Umesh Lalit of Thane, who joined our ambulance in Tadoba last month. Umesh has also made some very good suggestions about how a few of the procedures can be streamlined or simplified.
Satpuda Foundation’s Mobile Health Unit camp at Moharli range
Dates: 9 - 10 October, 2010
Villages: Dewada, Adegaon, Palasgaon, Karwa
After getting an email from Rajashree Khalap I decided to go to the MHU camp of Satpuda Foundation. After the initial arrangements with NCSA Conservation Officer Vishal Bansod I finally landed up directly at Moharli.
Day 1:
This was my first experience of such a medical camp. We got together at Satpuda Foundation's office, Moharli in the morning. Got to know the other volunteers and the doctors along with Guddu the driver, the co-ordinator at the office. After the doctors, Guddu made the initial check of the supplies and medicines required (for which I was just an observer). Then we went to Dewada, a village nearby.
We reached the usual place where they set up the mobile clinic. Doctors, volunteers started to arrange the clinic with equipment, medicines, patients' records, etc.
After 10 or 15minutes, people lined up. I was amazed to see the discipline they had. They queued up and waited for their turn. Volunteers helped in registration, finding the patient's history record in case of old patients. Doctors examined them one by one and gave prescription. Two of the patients were very scared to take injections and one of them ran away!!
Volunteers dispensed medicines according to the prescription.
Since the villagers couldn't understand the written prescription, the envelope containing the medicine were torn to indicate the number of doses.
After two hours we wound up and went back to the Moharli SF office by which time lunch was being prepared by a lady (sorry I didn't get to know her name). We had a good lunch, rested for a while and then started out for another village, Adegaon.
Here, we set up the clinic in the front porch of villager's house. They also served us lemon tea which was very good.
Here the people were more expressive. I observed here that the female population was more (at least among the people who turned up to the clinic) and they were loud, some of them even seemed to follow the latest styles! Also many women here seemed to have deficiencies and were anemic. We also saw a Durga idol being decorated for Navaratri.
The day ended with our return to Moharli and planning the next day's camps.
Day 2:
Next day I reached the Satpuda Foundation office at 9 a.m. as planned. We had poha prepared by Guddu and left for Palasgaon which is in the core area.
We reached the village entrance and walked to the school where we were to set up the clinic. People turned up in large numbers and here they were also very insistent about taking the injection! They believed that without injections, they couldnt get better! Quite the opposite of what I had observed the previous day!!
After the camp we had time to take a stroll while lunch was being prepared. Got to see and talk to some villagers. I happened to meet three or four girls who were doing bamboo work. They told me that they have neither gone to school nor studied at primary level. I wanted to get more information on this and spoke to a couple of other women. They too had not got the required primary education. Most of them had worked from their childhood.
After lunch we left for another village, Karwa. Here we rested for a while and then started with the setting up. I think the highest number of people turned up here. We didn't have sufficient time here to attend to all as we had to leave the core area within the stipulated time.
Then we had tea in a restaurant and dispersed.
The camp duration was 3 days, but I could make it only for 2 days as the third day's visit was in the core area villages and I had to return to Nagpur by evening for my return journey. Once we enter the core area there is no reliable means of getting back to Moharli by noon, so I decided not to attend, which I was not happy about - however there was no option. The team came to the hotel that I was staying in to say goodbye.
All in all it was a very good experience and the dedication of the doctors, staff and volunteers is appreciable.
http://satpudatiger.blogspot.com/2010/11/volunteering-at-health-camp-in-tadoba.html
This is a report by volunteer Umesh Lalit of Thane, who joined our ambulance in Tadoba last month. Umesh has also made some very good suggestions about how a few of the procedures can be streamlined or simplified.
Satpuda Foundation’s Mobile Health Unit camp at Moharli range
Dates: 9 - 10 October, 2010
Villages: Dewada, Adegaon, Palasgaon, Karwa
After getting an email from Rajashree Khalap I decided to go to the MHU camp of Satpuda Foundation. After the initial arrangements with NCSA Conservation Officer Vishal Bansod I finally landed up directly at Moharli.
Day 1:
This was my first experience of such a medical camp. We got together at Satpuda Foundation's office, Moharli in the morning. Got to know the other volunteers and the doctors along with Guddu the driver, the co-ordinator at the office. After the doctors, Guddu made the initial check of the supplies and medicines required (for which I was just an observer). Then we went to Dewada, a village nearby.
We reached the usual place where they set up the mobile clinic. Doctors, volunteers started to arrange the clinic with equipment, medicines, patients' records, etc.
After 10 or 15minutes, people lined up. I was amazed to see the discipline they had. They queued up and waited for their turn. Volunteers helped in registration, finding the patient's history record in case of old patients. Doctors examined them one by one and gave prescription. Two of the patients were very scared to take injections and one of them ran away!!
Volunteers dispensed medicines according to the prescription.
Since the villagers couldn't understand the written prescription, the envelope containing the medicine were torn to indicate the number of doses.
After two hours we wound up and went back to the Moharli SF office by which time lunch was being prepared by a lady (sorry I didn't get to know her name). We had a good lunch, rested for a while and then started out for another village, Adegaon.
Here, we set up the clinic in the front porch of villager's house. They also served us lemon tea which was very good.
Here the people were more expressive. I observed here that the female population was more (at least among the people who turned up to the clinic) and they were loud, some of them even seemed to follow the latest styles! Also many women here seemed to have deficiencies and were anemic. We also saw a Durga idol being decorated for Navaratri.
The day ended with our return to Moharli and planning the next day's camps.
Day 2:
Next day I reached the Satpuda Foundation office at 9 a.m. as planned. We had poha prepared by Guddu and left for Palasgaon which is in the core area.
We reached the village entrance and walked to the school where we were to set up the clinic. People turned up in large numbers and here they were also very insistent about taking the injection! They believed that without injections, they couldnt get better! Quite the opposite of what I had observed the previous day!!
After the camp we had time to take a stroll while lunch was being prepared. Got to see and talk to some villagers. I happened to meet three or four girls who were doing bamboo work. They told me that they have neither gone to school nor studied at primary level. I wanted to get more information on this and spoke to a couple of other women. They too had not got the required primary education. Most of them had worked from their childhood.
After lunch we left for another village, Karwa. Here we rested for a while and then started with the setting up. I think the highest number of people turned up here. We didn't have sufficient time here to attend to all as we had to leave the core area within the stipulated time.
Then we had tea in a restaurant and dispersed.
The camp duration was 3 days, but I could make it only for 2 days as the third day's visit was in the core area villages and I had to return to Nagpur by evening for my return journey. Once we enter the core area there is no reliable means of getting back to Moharli by noon, so I decided not to attend, which I was not happy about - however there was no option. The team came to the hotel that I was staying in to say goodbye.
All in all it was a very good experience and the dedication of the doctors, staff and volunteers is appreciable.
http://satpudatiger.blogspot.com/2010/11/volunteering-at-health-camp-in-tadoba.html
Saturday, November 13, 2010
A great Initiative by Vidya Athreya:Living With Dangerous Animals
WHICH animal is dangerous depends on who we ask, when and where. A construction worker in urban India today may consider even roadside domestic dogs as dangerous. A farmer in rural India perceives snakes in his fields as deadly, and I find
vehicles far more dangerous than either dogs or snakes. Danger is a subjective feeling induced by various factors such as landscape, lifestyle, wealth, age, occupation, religion and so on of the person and not the actual danger.Such has been my experience when working with leopards that live in human dominated landscapes, an assessment reiterated by many other carnivore ecologists.
In the case of domestic animals, the food, care and protection provided by humans guarantees their survival in good numbers,whereas for most wild carnivores the future is seriously threatened. For a start, wild carnivores are intrinsically rare because they occur at the top of the food chain.3 Further, they have a long interval between litters and produce few young of which even fewer survive until adulthood. This combined with human induced factors such as habitat destruction and active
persecution severely depresses their numbers.
Even as we expect wild animals to be confined to an existence inside forests, some species like hyenas, wolves and leopards(even cobras) can thrive outside forests, in human dominated landscapes. Since their mere presence is often construed as a
precursor to danger, we need to understand how to deal with them when they live near people. Mismanaging these animal populations in a populous country like India will almost certainly lead to an increase in their potential for danger, either via
increase in livestock attacks or attacks on people. This essay discusses dangerous wild animals that live near humans and not conflicts that arise due to the presence of parks, or human induced habitat degradation.
Some threat of attack on people by wild carnivores will always be present in areas where humans and dangerous wild animals coexist. However, serious concern arises when people are deliberately attacked (picked up from inside houses and/or the body
eaten) by these animals. India probably reports the highest level of attacks on people by many species of large carnivores(wolves, bears, tigers, leopards, lions) and it comes as no surprise that most of the attacks are outside our parks, among human habitations. This could be attributed to the density of people sharing the land with the carnivores. However, a closer look at the information indicates that purposeful attacks on people by different species of dangerous animals are isolated either temporally and/or spatially. Possibly, premeditated attacks are anomalies that we have not yet fully understood.
More than 700 lives were lost to wolf attacks in the late 1880s in the North West provinces and 600 kms away in parts of Bihar. The incidents occurred from the late 19th century until the 1930s and then again from 1970s until the late 1990.6 But,
wolves have ranged across the rest of India and still do, even living close to populated towns and cities with no comparable levels of conflict.Incidents of lions attacking and eating people in the vicinity of Gir, Gujarat occurred between 1901-1904,and again from the late 1980s, and was attributed to the drought in these periods.8 No similar cases were reported in-between.
In fact the Asiatic lions had a reputation of being extremely docile creatures whereas the people reported more aggressive behaviour after the surge in conflict in the 1980s.
Leopards occur throughout India but increased aggressive behaviour has again been isolated in time or space. Bears too occur in most forested parts of India but attacks on people have been reported from few areas – 137 attacks were reported between 1998 and 2000 from the villages and adjoining forests in the North Bilaspur forest division in Chhattisgarh,12 a state carved out of Madhya Pradesh (where wolf problems were reported).A surge in bear attacks on people in the state of Jammu and
Kashmir was reported in 2007.
In the case of tigers, there are historical records of tigers killing large numbers of people in India but again there is indication that this was more an exception than the norm.Chronic man-eating cases over several decades and even centuries have been reported only from the Sunderbans.16 In yet other tiger reserves with higher densities of tigers, the same species allow large number of tourists to approach very close in open vehicles.
Animals like wolves, tigers, leopards and lions can indeed be dangerous to people. However, attacks on people are more an exception than the norm and attacks on livestock usually indicate that wild prey is not present in sufficient numbers. Our study of leopards living in a predominantly human dominated landscape in Junnar found that the number of tended livestock (owned by people) attacked was few compared to the number of leopards present in the region.Therefore, even in a human
dominated landscape, these animals are more likely to go for prey other than that actively protected by people.
The predominant response to the problem of wild carnivore has been a call for their removal – either by trapping or killing them. In the states of Washington and Idaho (USA) between 1987 and 1990, 82-330 mountain lions were killed each year.18 In
Namibia between 1980 and 1991 about 7000 cheetahs were killed in response to livestock depredation.In Montana (USA)4116 bounty payments were disbursed for wolves in 1903.20 Scandinavia with a population density of less than 20 people per
sq km, exterminated all its wolves by 1960, the bear went functionally extinct (too few individuals) in Norway by 1972 and wolverine and lynx populations severely declined due to unregulated hunting approved by the administration.
It is only now with changing attitudes that these four carnivore species are recolonising parts of Europe and the Americas.
Also, scientists have questioned the efficacy of lethal control as a method of dealing with livestock killings. Killings do not necessarily reduce livestock depredation and the error in determining the identity of the ‘culprit’ animal is very high. For instance, in the USA, between 1996 and 2001, millions of innocent carnivore animals were killed.22 In India these methods have not even been standardized, perhaps leading to the trapping/killing of a large number of innocent animals. Even today, most countries lethally control carnivores either as a response to livestock depredation or to increase the populations of wild ungulates for people’s consumption or for trophy hunting.In India wild ungulates are not regarded as food meant for routine harvesting, nor do we carry out hunting for trophies. Given that India has 0.18 billion24 livestock(living with a human population of one billion), livestock depredation is inevitable.
What is surprising is that India with an average population density of 337 people per sq km still retains 57 of its 58 carnivore species (we lost the cheetah in the early 20th century) of which 14 weigh more than 10 kilos (making them potentially
dangerous to humans). India never practiced large-scale extermination and/or bounty killing of these dangerous animals as an administrative exercise. The carnivores were hunted/worshipped/revered/tolerated and bounty killing or the concept of
exterminating the entire species because it was dangerous arrived with the British.25A conservative estimate of the number of tigers killed between 1875 and 1925 in the plains is 65000 (16,573 killed between 1879-1888) while more than 100,000
wolves were killed in British India between 1871 and 1916.26
However, in the face of conflict, retaliatory killings do and will take place. Though until the 1970s/1980s, it was possible for the administration to kill unwanted feral animals and wild animal individuals that had become dangerous to human life, but post the 1980s, the shift in political ideology towards the welfare of individuals has made lethal control of even problem carnivores almost impossible.
Currently large numbers of potentially dangerous animals (snakes, bears, tigers, lions, leopards) are trapped following complaints of livestock depredation and sometimes human attacks and released in forests away from where they were
captured. Studies on captive wild carnivores show that moving wild animals, even those that have always been in captivity, to another new enclosure significantly increases their stress levels.27 Moreover, prolonged heightened stress brings about
hormonal changes which increases aggression.Our study in Junnar29 found that leopards living in human dominated landscapes (density of people > 170 sq km) without any conflict, when removed from their area to another new site led to the
initiation of attacks on people. That is, animals living without attacking people even in high human density areas were responsible for attacks on people when not ‘treated’ correctly.
Paradoxically, the removals that we carry out might even increase the population at the site of removal because a vacant territory is like a vacuum that is immediately filled by a younger inexperienced animal which can potentially be more
dangerous.
Snaring and killing of individuals in the population can also increase the danger to humans because wounded animals are unable to effectively hunt normal prey. Even as 20,000 tigers were killed as trophies between 1860 and 1960, a British
naturalist estimated that as many as one in five tigers shot in the 1930s escaped,31 increasing the danger of attacks on humans.
The lack of information on the effect of our control programmes on their behaviour has already been pointed out.There is also little doubt that since removal of any sort affects their populations in myriad ways, we need to understand how this
contributes to the creation of problem individuals.
Does a sub-adult animal watching its mother killed or trapped by humans understand the implications? If it cannot hunt effectively on its own, does that affect conflict levels as the hungry animal tries to obtain food? How does this stressful
experience affect its attitude towards humans? At the risk of sounding anthropomorphic, how might wolf parents react when they see humans burning their pups alive? If, as I think, they are aware of what we have done, how does it affect their behaviour towards to us?
My work has focused on human leopard conflict in a human dominated landscape inhabited by large numbers of people and leopards. At the height of the conflict, between 2001 and 2002, leopards in the Junnar forest division, Pune district, attacked 50 people. There were reports of leopards taking children sleeping between parents from outside houses. This problem in the irrigated croplands was attributed to decreasing forest cover and wild prey, forcing the leopards to stray into sugarcane fields and thus increasing the potential for conflict. It was apparent that not many people (managers, public, media) were aware of the biology of the animal and its relation to the problem.
No attack had taken place in the same region the year before the surge in attacks on people. Following the surge, at least 60 adult (at least three years old) leopards were removed from the region, indicating that these 60 had been living in the same
region without attacking people.
The very first attack created panic among the media, authorities and the public, which only worsened the problem. This panic reaction was compounded by a lack of understanding of the biology of the species. It was believed that the leopards were
moving into the croplands from the adjoining forests (about 60 km away). Leopards (like other carnivores) are territorial species and unlike herds of wildebeest do not migrate from habitat to habitat. It was also thought that the lack of wild prey in the forests had made them enter the croplands, not realizing that the presence of leopards implies the existence of sufficient food to support and sustain them. If their food resource of carnivores is scarce in a landscape (e.g., fewer rats, fewer dogs, goats) then their response is to traverse across a wider area in search of food.
It appeared that human dominated croplands reporting the presence of a large numbers of leopards were adjacent to forests into which leopards trapped in a wider area had been released over the years,33 thus increasing their numbers near the release
site. Finally, our (public, media, managers) perception that leopards found outside forests have to be put back inside only worsened the problem by increasing attacks on people near the site of release, a clear instance of wrong human intervention.34
Wild animals greatly fear man. Our methods of catching the wild animals are faulty and likely to lead to stressful and close interaction with man, thereby increasing their potential danger for us after their release. A leopard trapped in a cage is akin to our being stuck in a lift. To worsen matters, the trapped leopard is surrounded by hundreds of people. It is normally wounded as it thrashes in the cage in an attempt to escape. Subsequently, the same animal is then transported tens or hundreds of kilometres, unsedated, along highways, fed by humans, to be released elsewhere. This method is routinely used for all carnivores that are perceived as a ‘problem’ in India (snakes, bears, leopards, tigers, leopards, lions).
It is unlikely that India will in the near future accept the management practices of the West. Of course, they might not even be appropriate. As argued by Weber and Rabinowitz,35 perhaps innovation is required and other cultures and regions need to
provide lessons which might make it possible to evolve better ways for humans and carnivores to coexist.
Carnivores will survive only if the people want them to.36 People will want them only if they accept that these animals are not inherently dangerous, and though as with any other natural disaster, a threat does exist from these animals, we are capable of proactively reducing it (towards livestock as well as human life) and that people need to be provided assistance before (to prevent attacks) and after attacks. Moveover, various sections of our society need to be educated that our current methods of dealing with dangerous animals will only result in an increased danger.
People affected by carnivores are predominantly poor/rural people37 whereas policies (including erroneous ones such as removal from site of problem and release elsewhere) are made by the urban people who are rarely affected. Many researchers
have shown that a proactive method of educating the people, along with assistance to reduce their losses has enabled a greater level of coexistence. It is worth remembering that many scientists working with very ‘dangerous’ animals like elephants,carnivores and snakes have noted the deep-rooted tolerance that rural Indians show, even in the face of conflict. Such has also been my experience.
Villages have often stopped the forest department from trapping leopards from their area. A father of a boy who was injured in a leopard attack did not think it necessary to inform the department about the presence of another leopard near his house because the animal had not harmed anyone. Most of these rural farmers believe that the problem is due to the loss of wild lands and prey, making species like the leopard come near people. It is important that these aspects of carnivore conservation are not forgotten because of our bad policies.
People can be convinced to accept the presence of these dangerous species if made aware of the problem and provided assistance, an aspect often ignored by NGOs and the administration in our country. Only providing monetary compensation
will not help especially when obtaining the compensation is an arduous process.38 Hussain39 and Mishra,40 both working for the conservation of the snow leopard in the Himalayas, have helped the local people to set up insurance schemes which insure
the livestock against attacks from snow leopards. These scientists have put in a lot of effort to involve the affected people and make them aware of the nature of the problem.
Similarly, Marker worked with the livestock ranching farmers in Namibia to stop them from killing large number of cheetahs. Removals were not helping and as is the case of the leopard in India, were adversely affecting the farmers. Again she helped
the people by providing knowledge and support on better livestock protection.Hazzah worked with the Kenyan Maasai tostart a programme wherein the Maasai are involved in monitoring livestock depredation as well as in protecting the lions.
Again she assisted them by providing a knowledge base as also by starting a small scheme that employed the local Maasai to look after the lions.
Wildlife cannot be restricted to the limited spaces which form our protected areas, especially when dealing with carnivores that have very wide ranging habitats. A single wolf pack can range over hundreds of kilometres, implying that any
ecologically meaningful population will require many times that space. Coexistence with humans then becomes a necessity for the animals. In Europe bears, wolves and lynxes move across country borders making the concept of demarcating inviolate
spaces for them meaningless. If we want these species to survive then we have to learn to live with them in ways that reduces their danger, just as we take precautions when we visit malaria prone areas or when crossing the road. Besides, we have to acknowledge that the threat from these dangerous animals is miniscule compared to deaths from malaria or road accidents.
However, in order to devise better methods of coexistence, we have to change the way we look at these animals. Currently we do not know enough about the dangerous animals living near people and this knowledge is especially crucial for a populous
country like India. Studies related to attacks on people have focused mainly on patterns following livestock depredation or human attacks. No study has been conducted which helps us understand how the majority of these dangerous animals live
without causing any harm.
Our study in the Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra found that most of the leopards that were trapped due to public pressure or livestock attacks had been living among high densities of people (> 200 sq km) without ever attacking people.43 Only when we
appreciate how they live without creating a problem can we begin to understand the aberrations. For instance, a radio-collared leopard living in a sugar-cane field in Gujarat was within 50 m of people most of the time and yet the villagers were not even aware of her presence. She used an area of over 200 sq km, had cubs and finally died due to human persecution, though not once had she ever attacked people.
Our knowledge base of how dangerous animals can be has to be obtained by focusing on how they live without becoming a problem. Scientists, conservationists and the administration have to assist the people in devising better livestock protection
measures while simultaneously decreasing potential food base for the dangerous animals near human habitations (such as garbage for feral animals, rats in case of snakes). By appreciating the fact that India has retained most of its dangerous species by weaving them into its culture and religion, we should aim at finding culturally/socially/ politically acceptable methods of living with animals so that they become less dangerous to us. Killings, snaring, removal and the associated release of many potentially dangerous animals that is routinely carried out are only likely to increase the danger.
http://www.projectwaghoba.in/
vehicles far more dangerous than either dogs or snakes. Danger is a subjective feeling induced by various factors such as landscape, lifestyle, wealth, age, occupation, religion and so on of the person and not the actual danger.Such has been my experience when working with leopards that live in human dominated landscapes, an assessment reiterated by many other carnivore ecologists.
In the case of domestic animals, the food, care and protection provided by humans guarantees their survival in good numbers,whereas for most wild carnivores the future is seriously threatened. For a start, wild carnivores are intrinsically rare because they occur at the top of the food chain.3 Further, they have a long interval between litters and produce few young of which even fewer survive until adulthood. This combined with human induced factors such as habitat destruction and active
persecution severely depresses their numbers.
Even as we expect wild animals to be confined to an existence inside forests, some species like hyenas, wolves and leopards(even cobras) can thrive outside forests, in human dominated landscapes. Since their mere presence is often construed as a
precursor to danger, we need to understand how to deal with them when they live near people. Mismanaging these animal populations in a populous country like India will almost certainly lead to an increase in their potential for danger, either via
increase in livestock attacks or attacks on people. This essay discusses dangerous wild animals that live near humans and not conflicts that arise due to the presence of parks, or human induced habitat degradation.
Some threat of attack on people by wild carnivores will always be present in areas where humans and dangerous wild animals coexist. However, serious concern arises when people are deliberately attacked (picked up from inside houses and/or the body
eaten) by these animals. India probably reports the highest level of attacks on people by many species of large carnivores(wolves, bears, tigers, leopards, lions) and it comes as no surprise that most of the attacks are outside our parks, among human habitations. This could be attributed to the density of people sharing the land with the carnivores. However, a closer look at the information indicates that purposeful attacks on people by different species of dangerous animals are isolated either temporally and/or spatially. Possibly, premeditated attacks are anomalies that we have not yet fully understood.
More than 700 lives were lost to wolf attacks in the late 1880s in the North West provinces and 600 kms away in parts of Bihar. The incidents occurred from the late 19th century until the 1930s and then again from 1970s until the late 1990.6 But,
wolves have ranged across the rest of India and still do, even living close to populated towns and cities with no comparable levels of conflict.Incidents of lions attacking and eating people in the vicinity of Gir, Gujarat occurred between 1901-1904,and again from the late 1980s, and was attributed to the drought in these periods.8 No similar cases were reported in-between.
In fact the Asiatic lions had a reputation of being extremely docile creatures whereas the people reported more aggressive behaviour after the surge in conflict in the 1980s.
Leopards occur throughout India but increased aggressive behaviour has again been isolated in time or space. Bears too occur in most forested parts of India but attacks on people have been reported from few areas – 137 attacks were reported between 1998 and 2000 from the villages and adjoining forests in the North Bilaspur forest division in Chhattisgarh,12 a state carved out of Madhya Pradesh (where wolf problems were reported).A surge in bear attacks on people in the state of Jammu and
Kashmir was reported in 2007.
In the case of tigers, there are historical records of tigers killing large numbers of people in India but again there is indication that this was more an exception than the norm.Chronic man-eating cases over several decades and even centuries have been reported only from the Sunderbans.16 In yet other tiger reserves with higher densities of tigers, the same species allow large number of tourists to approach very close in open vehicles.
Animals like wolves, tigers, leopards and lions can indeed be dangerous to people. However, attacks on people are more an exception than the norm and attacks on livestock usually indicate that wild prey is not present in sufficient numbers. Our study of leopards living in a predominantly human dominated landscape in Junnar found that the number of tended livestock (owned by people) attacked was few compared to the number of leopards present in the region.Therefore, even in a human
dominated landscape, these animals are more likely to go for prey other than that actively protected by people.
The predominant response to the problem of wild carnivore has been a call for their removal – either by trapping or killing them. In the states of Washington and Idaho (USA) between 1987 and 1990, 82-330 mountain lions were killed each year.18 In
Namibia between 1980 and 1991 about 7000 cheetahs were killed in response to livestock depredation.In Montana (USA)4116 bounty payments were disbursed for wolves in 1903.20 Scandinavia with a population density of less than 20 people per
sq km, exterminated all its wolves by 1960, the bear went functionally extinct (too few individuals) in Norway by 1972 and wolverine and lynx populations severely declined due to unregulated hunting approved by the administration.
It is only now with changing attitudes that these four carnivore species are recolonising parts of Europe and the Americas.
Also, scientists have questioned the efficacy of lethal control as a method of dealing with livestock killings. Killings do not necessarily reduce livestock depredation and the error in determining the identity of the ‘culprit’ animal is very high. For instance, in the USA, between 1996 and 2001, millions of innocent carnivore animals were killed.22 In India these methods have not even been standardized, perhaps leading to the trapping/killing of a large number of innocent animals. Even today, most countries lethally control carnivores either as a response to livestock depredation or to increase the populations of wild ungulates for people’s consumption or for trophy hunting.In India wild ungulates are not regarded as food meant for routine harvesting, nor do we carry out hunting for trophies. Given that India has 0.18 billion24 livestock(living with a human population of one billion), livestock depredation is inevitable.
What is surprising is that India with an average population density of 337 people per sq km still retains 57 of its 58 carnivore species (we lost the cheetah in the early 20th century) of which 14 weigh more than 10 kilos (making them potentially
dangerous to humans). India never practiced large-scale extermination and/or bounty killing of these dangerous animals as an administrative exercise. The carnivores were hunted/worshipped/revered/tolerated and bounty killing or the concept of
exterminating the entire species because it was dangerous arrived with the British.25A conservative estimate of the number of tigers killed between 1875 and 1925 in the plains is 65000 (16,573 killed between 1879-1888) while more than 100,000
wolves were killed in British India between 1871 and 1916.26
However, in the face of conflict, retaliatory killings do and will take place. Though until the 1970s/1980s, it was possible for the administration to kill unwanted feral animals and wild animal individuals that had become dangerous to human life, but post the 1980s, the shift in political ideology towards the welfare of individuals has made lethal control of even problem carnivores almost impossible.
Currently large numbers of potentially dangerous animals (snakes, bears, tigers, lions, leopards) are trapped following complaints of livestock depredation and sometimes human attacks and released in forests away from where they were
captured. Studies on captive wild carnivores show that moving wild animals, even those that have always been in captivity, to another new enclosure significantly increases their stress levels.27 Moreover, prolonged heightened stress brings about
hormonal changes which increases aggression.Our study in Junnar29 found that leopards living in human dominated landscapes (density of people > 170 sq km) without any conflict, when removed from their area to another new site led to the
initiation of attacks on people. That is, animals living without attacking people even in high human density areas were responsible for attacks on people when not ‘treated’ correctly.
Paradoxically, the removals that we carry out might even increase the population at the site of removal because a vacant territory is like a vacuum that is immediately filled by a younger inexperienced animal which can potentially be more
dangerous.
Snaring and killing of individuals in the population can also increase the danger to humans because wounded animals are unable to effectively hunt normal prey. Even as 20,000 tigers were killed as trophies between 1860 and 1960, a British
naturalist estimated that as many as one in five tigers shot in the 1930s escaped,31 increasing the danger of attacks on humans.
The lack of information on the effect of our control programmes on their behaviour has already been pointed out.There is also little doubt that since removal of any sort affects their populations in myriad ways, we need to understand how this
contributes to the creation of problem individuals.
Does a sub-adult animal watching its mother killed or trapped by humans understand the implications? If it cannot hunt effectively on its own, does that affect conflict levels as the hungry animal tries to obtain food? How does this stressful
experience affect its attitude towards humans? At the risk of sounding anthropomorphic, how might wolf parents react when they see humans burning their pups alive? If, as I think, they are aware of what we have done, how does it affect their behaviour towards to us?
My work has focused on human leopard conflict in a human dominated landscape inhabited by large numbers of people and leopards. At the height of the conflict, between 2001 and 2002, leopards in the Junnar forest division, Pune district, attacked 50 people. There were reports of leopards taking children sleeping between parents from outside houses. This problem in the irrigated croplands was attributed to decreasing forest cover and wild prey, forcing the leopards to stray into sugarcane fields and thus increasing the potential for conflict. It was apparent that not many people (managers, public, media) were aware of the biology of the animal and its relation to the problem.
No attack had taken place in the same region the year before the surge in attacks on people. Following the surge, at least 60 adult (at least three years old) leopards were removed from the region, indicating that these 60 had been living in the same
region without attacking people.
The very first attack created panic among the media, authorities and the public, which only worsened the problem. This panic reaction was compounded by a lack of understanding of the biology of the species. It was believed that the leopards were
moving into the croplands from the adjoining forests (about 60 km away). Leopards (like other carnivores) are territorial species and unlike herds of wildebeest do not migrate from habitat to habitat. It was also thought that the lack of wild prey in the forests had made them enter the croplands, not realizing that the presence of leopards implies the existence of sufficient food to support and sustain them. If their food resource of carnivores is scarce in a landscape (e.g., fewer rats, fewer dogs, goats) then their response is to traverse across a wider area in search of food.
It appeared that human dominated croplands reporting the presence of a large numbers of leopards were adjacent to forests into which leopards trapped in a wider area had been released over the years,33 thus increasing their numbers near the release
site. Finally, our (public, media, managers) perception that leopards found outside forests have to be put back inside only worsened the problem by increasing attacks on people near the site of release, a clear instance of wrong human intervention.34
Wild animals greatly fear man. Our methods of catching the wild animals are faulty and likely to lead to stressful and close interaction with man, thereby increasing their potential danger for us after their release. A leopard trapped in a cage is akin to our being stuck in a lift. To worsen matters, the trapped leopard is surrounded by hundreds of people. It is normally wounded as it thrashes in the cage in an attempt to escape. Subsequently, the same animal is then transported tens or hundreds of kilometres, unsedated, along highways, fed by humans, to be released elsewhere. This method is routinely used for all carnivores that are perceived as a ‘problem’ in India (snakes, bears, leopards, tigers, leopards, lions).
It is unlikely that India will in the near future accept the management practices of the West. Of course, they might not even be appropriate. As argued by Weber and Rabinowitz,35 perhaps innovation is required and other cultures and regions need to
provide lessons which might make it possible to evolve better ways for humans and carnivores to coexist.
Carnivores will survive only if the people want them to.36 People will want them only if they accept that these animals are not inherently dangerous, and though as with any other natural disaster, a threat does exist from these animals, we are capable of proactively reducing it (towards livestock as well as human life) and that people need to be provided assistance before (to prevent attacks) and after attacks. Moveover, various sections of our society need to be educated that our current methods of dealing with dangerous animals will only result in an increased danger.
People affected by carnivores are predominantly poor/rural people37 whereas policies (including erroneous ones such as removal from site of problem and release elsewhere) are made by the urban people who are rarely affected. Many researchers
have shown that a proactive method of educating the people, along with assistance to reduce their losses has enabled a greater level of coexistence. It is worth remembering that many scientists working with very ‘dangerous’ animals like elephants,carnivores and snakes have noted the deep-rooted tolerance that rural Indians show, even in the face of conflict. Such has also been my experience.
Villages have often stopped the forest department from trapping leopards from their area. A father of a boy who was injured in a leopard attack did not think it necessary to inform the department about the presence of another leopard near his house because the animal had not harmed anyone. Most of these rural farmers believe that the problem is due to the loss of wild lands and prey, making species like the leopard come near people. It is important that these aspects of carnivore conservation are not forgotten because of our bad policies.
People can be convinced to accept the presence of these dangerous species if made aware of the problem and provided assistance, an aspect often ignored by NGOs and the administration in our country. Only providing monetary compensation
will not help especially when obtaining the compensation is an arduous process.38 Hussain39 and Mishra,40 both working for the conservation of the snow leopard in the Himalayas, have helped the local people to set up insurance schemes which insure
the livestock against attacks from snow leopards. These scientists have put in a lot of effort to involve the affected people and make them aware of the nature of the problem.
Similarly, Marker worked with the livestock ranching farmers in Namibia to stop them from killing large number of cheetahs. Removals were not helping and as is the case of the leopard in India, were adversely affecting the farmers. Again she helped
the people by providing knowledge and support on better livestock protection.Hazzah worked with the Kenyan Maasai tostart a programme wherein the Maasai are involved in monitoring livestock depredation as well as in protecting the lions.
Again she assisted them by providing a knowledge base as also by starting a small scheme that employed the local Maasai to look after the lions.
Wildlife cannot be restricted to the limited spaces which form our protected areas, especially when dealing with carnivores that have very wide ranging habitats. A single wolf pack can range over hundreds of kilometres, implying that any
ecologically meaningful population will require many times that space. Coexistence with humans then becomes a necessity for the animals. In Europe bears, wolves and lynxes move across country borders making the concept of demarcating inviolate
spaces for them meaningless. If we want these species to survive then we have to learn to live with them in ways that reduces their danger, just as we take precautions when we visit malaria prone areas or when crossing the road. Besides, we have to acknowledge that the threat from these dangerous animals is miniscule compared to deaths from malaria or road accidents.
However, in order to devise better methods of coexistence, we have to change the way we look at these animals. Currently we do not know enough about the dangerous animals living near people and this knowledge is especially crucial for a populous
country like India. Studies related to attacks on people have focused mainly on patterns following livestock depredation or human attacks. No study has been conducted which helps us understand how the majority of these dangerous animals live
without causing any harm.
Our study in the Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra found that most of the leopards that were trapped due to public pressure or livestock attacks had been living among high densities of people (> 200 sq km) without ever attacking people.43 Only when we
appreciate how they live without creating a problem can we begin to understand the aberrations. For instance, a radio-collared leopard living in a sugar-cane field in Gujarat was within 50 m of people most of the time and yet the villagers were not even aware of her presence. She used an area of over 200 sq km, had cubs and finally died due to human persecution, though not once had she ever attacked people.
Our knowledge base of how dangerous animals can be has to be obtained by focusing on how they live without becoming a problem. Scientists, conservationists and the administration have to assist the people in devising better livestock protection
measures while simultaneously decreasing potential food base for the dangerous animals near human habitations (such as garbage for feral animals, rats in case of snakes). By appreciating the fact that India has retained most of its dangerous species by weaving them into its culture and religion, we should aim at finding culturally/socially/ politically acceptable methods of living with animals so that they become less dangerous to us. Killings, snaring, removal and the associated release of many potentially dangerous animals that is routinely carried out are only likely to increase the danger.
http://www.projectwaghoba.in/
Friday, November 12, 2010
Great Read: Tigers straying from forest to forest
Van-van bhatakte bagh
By Fateh Singh Rathore, famous tiger expert
Rajasthan Patrika, Jaipur Edition, 21 October 2010
Thanks to Soonooji for the translation
We must consider why the survival of tigers is once again in danger, and who is responsible for this state of affairs
Nowadays one sees many news items being printed about tigers. The truth is that their condition is not too good. There are too many causes of disturbance in the forest. Forty guard posts (chowkies) have been constructed recently in the Ranthambhore National Park (RNP). The past three or four years have seen several tractors, trolleys, trucks etc. moving about in the forest, in contravention of High Court rulings against any such activity. Lots of vehicles have been used to build the chowkies in the park. Trees have been cut, explosives have been detonated. The ecology is being ruined. Around a hundred anicuts have been built, although it is worth observing that there is no water in a single one. Why were the anicuts built at all, or was it necessary to spend a budget that had been allocated? Human interference increased in the very areas which are favourite breeding spots for tigers. More roads were built, and breeding areas destroyed on the pretext of improving facilities for tourists. There are now no tigresses in those areas. Each year used to see the birth of nine or ten cubs. However, in the past three and a half years, there have been only two new cubs born. This is itself a kind of record. Even the authorities admit that Ranthambhore has only 27 tigers.
The earlier belief was that one should not interfere with nature, that enforced breeding could be harmful. Now females are being isolated, buffalo calves are bred to feed them, lakhs of rupees are being spent on all this. There is no need for this at all. Whatever nature does is done appropriately, any attempts to impose any kind of order can only lead to problems. The forest department needs to concentrate on saving the ecology and environment, not on interventions to increase breeding. If the natural environment is saved, the tigers will breed naturally. Keladevi Sanctuary occupies a vast area, but not a single tiger can be found there. Even the tigers of Ranthambhore have started leaving the park, going as far as Bharatpur, Uttar Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh.
In spite of all this, neither does the forest department do anything about it, nor do the media raise any queries. Nobody seeks to explain why the tigers are moving out of the forest. All they say is that this is where the tiger left from, this is where he is headed, and this is where he has reached. They are followed by patrolling teams, video recordings are made, but no investigations are ever carried out. It’s like saying that a peacock danced in the forest and someone saw it dance. Others believe whatever the officials tell them. Officials who can hardly be called experts on the subject.
Sariska is finished, the tigers there are finished, and the very officers who presided over this demise have now been posted in Ranthambhore. Perhaps they were told “Thanks for your sterling work: now go and do likewise in Ranthambhore”. There is no accountability, no investigation, never any punishment for things that go wrong. Increasing tourism cannot be blamed for this state of affairs. The forest department itself is in charge of tourism, which is increasing manifold, with no control on the number of hotels coming up. Tourists can hardly be called antagonistic to the tiger. Tourists come to see the tigers, and all that the forest department officials are bothered about is to find out each tourist’s passport number, and whether he has paid for his bookings. This takes priority over their main task which is to keep a watch over the tigers. There is rampant construction work going on in the forest – who will put a stop to it? A major problem is that of the increasing human population around the park. Attempts to relocate villages away from the park’s boundaries are rarely successful. Villagers even accept the compensation given to them for moving away, only to return to the same spot later. In the end, the responsibility for implementing the relocation effectively also lies with the forest department. Today Ranthambhore has only 27 tigers, yet the 400 staff employed to guard them can barely recognize them – what is the use of that? The officers hardly know which tiger roams in which area of the park.
The number of tigers is falling, and nobody seems to question why this is happening. The forest and its animals are not being protected adequately. The media print whatever they are told by authorities, without making any attempt at an independent investigation. 11 tigers have moved out of Ranthambhore, 5 sent to Sariska. There is an attempt being made to reintroduce tigers there, but with what result? No cubs have been born there since the relocation. Tiger T12 was sent to Sariska, but there is now no sign of him. Three females and two males were sent to Sariska, and the process of sending one more male is on. Have three males ever been known to stay together near three females? In actual fact, one usually finds two or three females in the territory of each male but the Sariska experiment is being carried out without considering these factors.
I have worked for fifty years in the forest service, yet do not presume to call myself a tiger expert, unlike several officials today who announce that they are experts on tigers. Each national park has a couple of such “experts”. It is worth finding out whether any of them has ever worked at establishing a national park. There should be an independent investigation of their achievements, carried out by a committee which includes members of the public. Today there is nobody who can say anything to them, or point out their shortcomings. We should have published appraisals of their work. If one is punished for his apathy or wrongdoing, it will automatically check others from doing likewise. Thousands of crores of rupees were spent on Sariska, but not a single person has been punished for its annihilation. Each time they say that what’s happened has happened, but nobody wants to say why it happened, or how it happened, or who was in charge when it happened. Did we not have any people who could have saved it? What were they doing while it was all going on? Sariska has been emptied, Keladevi has no tigers: why? Attention should be paid to the situation honestly to ensure that the tiger can be saved.
Good Read: How much for a forest?
The floatation of Coal India was a smasher. Bigger than anyone could have dreamed. The Government of India launched the initial public offering (IPO) of Coal India Ltd, the state-owned coal mining company that is the largest in the world, on the 18th of October. With the 10% stake they put on offer, they hoped to generate 150 billion Rupees’ worth of demand – enough to go some way towards keeping the fiscal deficit within its target for the year.
The IPO closed on the 21st October 15 times oversubscribed, having generated over seven times that. It had generated more cash than the Government could have possibly hoped for.
But behind the cheers of the Coal Ministry is another, quieter sound. It’s roar of hacksaws and the crashing of trees, the thrum of diverse forest life settling into silence. It’s the sound of the cost of this success and of the quiet death of a valiant attempt to balance economic development with ecological sustenance.
Rewind to March 2010. Coal India Ltd, mindful of how attractive it might look to potential investors, was searching to reduce the amount of time it took to get environmental clearance for its mining applications. Together with the coal ministry, the company approached the Ministry of Environment and Forests and proffered nine forest zones in India under which they had coal reserves. Assess them, the coal bodies offered, and tell us which areas we can mine in and which we can’t. The idea was that the assessment could basically give the go-ahead for mining in certain areas, so slicing out the time and money spent applying for unlikely mining approvals.
The environment ministry accepted. Of the nine forest zones, they identified 37% as having particularly dense forest cover, and as supporting particularly rich biodiversity. From now on, said Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, applications to mine the 222 coal blocks that lay underneath these richly biodiverse areas would not be entertained by his ministry. The areas were ‘no-go’ zones. In the remaining 63% of these forest areas (which covered 383 coal blocks), applications for environmental clearance would be entertained as in the usual manner.
Good afternoon. How much for a forest?, editors choice
A coal mine in Jharia, Jharkhand. The area was previously covered in a thick belt of forest, inhabited by tribal communities
The coal industry went mad. The move put 619 million tonnes of coal a year out of reach, and the IPO of Coal India Ltd was already in the pipeline for later in the year. They had been aiming for looser protocols on mining applications, and instead they had ended up with the same processes, but in a smaller area. “It blew up in their faces, basically,” says Preethi Herman, a campaigner with Greenpeace India following the developments.
The coal ministry began to contact ministries of power and infrastructure, painting the move as one that would inhibit economic growth and development, and rallying them to push for the restrictions to be removed.
It’s worth pointing out here that Ramesh is by no means a Luddite. Three hundred mining applications have been approved in the last 30 years versus only 24 rejected (though Ramesh has only been environment minister since May 2009). In trying to strike a balance between development and environment – that is, striving that development be sustainable – Ramesh has explicitly stated that mining must continue.
“They [mine owners] should try to maximise the potential of mining areas instead of trying to access ‘no go’ zones,” he said in March 2010.
Yet the protected zones began to crumble away, as pressure on the Prime Minister to do something about Ramesh’s stand came both directly from the coal ministry, and indirectly from the immense coal mining lobby that spans the country – identified by many as being hand-in-hand with the state forest departments for the purpose of mining approvals.
In May, the Prime Minister’s Office ordered a review of the ‘no-go’ zones, first stating a concern that the areas could turn into breeding grounds for Naxalism, before talking mainly about how many millions of rupees worth of coal could be extracted from the no-go areas.
India gets over half its electricity from burning coal, and the link between a developing economy and an unlimited access to the country’s coal seams must have been stridently made in the corridors of power.
The awkward environmental restrictions fell just in time. Less than three weeks before the IPO was due to launch, the Law Ministry wrote that the no go zones were, ironically, in conflict with the forest conservation acts and appeared to have “no sound legal basis”.
On the same day as the shares floated and foreign investors, reassured of the economic stability of coal in India, rushed in to buy, a conference on biodiversity began in Nagoya, Japan. The tenth Conference of Parties (COP10) on 18th and 19th October was the stage for the presentation of a report on The Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity (TEEB), a three-year study into the economic value of ecological health. It called for the loss of biodiversity to be addressed as an issue of equal importance to climate change and to be tackled in parallel with it. It was welcomed most heartily by Jairam Ramesh.
“India is planning a TEEB for India study to assess its natural capital. We are committed to developing a framework for green national accounts that we can implement by 2015,” stated Ramesh in a note prepared in advance of the Nagoya summit.
Placing a market value on natural assets is a fascinating idea and one that shall certainly be subjected to vociferous debate. Those arguing for it might brandish this story of the no go zones as proof that it is economic values that shall most often triumph, in the political battles of a developing country. And it seems we are short-sighted: importance is always be placed on the economic gains that are most immediate rather than long-term considerations.
“TEEB aims to provide strong incentives for countries to ensure decisions are not solely based on short-term gains, but build foundations for sustainable and inclusive development,” Ramesh continued, in the explanation of his decision to conduct a TEEB study in India.
So what of the biodiversity that the environment ministry is trying to protect? Broadly, India has 7-8% of the world’s recorded plant and animal species in only 2.4% of the world’s area. This makes it one of 17 “mega-diverse” countries in the world. Ten different biogeographic zones can be found across the country, from deserts to wetlands, Malabar coast to Himalayan peaks. As far as forests go, this includes 16 major and 251 subtypes of forest, though it’s not yet clear which types the proposed no-go areas correlate or correlated with.
Placing a value on biodiversity could also go some way towards describing the value of mature forests as opposed to new cover. “We will assure that we will plant 2.5 times more trees where we cut trees,” said coal minister Shriprakash Jaiswal in October, as the whittling away of the protected zones continued. A draft mission for government action on climate change, released during this ministerial battle, allocated 440 billion rupees to double the amount of land taken up for afforestation. Of course, replanted trees do not compare to ancient forest in terms of the amount of biodiversity they support.
Millions of livelihoods in India are maintained by its biodiversity and it also carries great cultural importance. Not least in the tiger, the endangered national animal of India, and in the elephant, the national heritage animal. In addition to thick forest cover, the no go zones also incorporated some known ‘corridors’ of animal movement between forest areas.
For now the environment ministry is again being painted as anti-development. In late October the coal ministry wrote in a Cabinet note that “any new criteria at this stage that causes us to reassess our resource base will not only push the power generation growth plans of the country but will also have its effects in the future when the climate change issue becomes more stringent.”
Whether the coal ministry will be successful in its battle to leave no coal seam unturned, using climate change as an argument for cutting down forests certainly breaks new ground.
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2010/11/10/good-afternoon-how-much-for-a-forest/
The IPO closed on the 21st October 15 times oversubscribed, having generated over seven times that. It had generated more cash than the Government could have possibly hoped for.
But behind the cheers of the Coal Ministry is another, quieter sound. It’s roar of hacksaws and the crashing of trees, the thrum of diverse forest life settling into silence. It’s the sound of the cost of this success and of the quiet death of a valiant attempt to balance economic development with ecological sustenance.
Rewind to March 2010. Coal India Ltd, mindful of how attractive it might look to potential investors, was searching to reduce the amount of time it took to get environmental clearance for its mining applications. Together with the coal ministry, the company approached the Ministry of Environment and Forests and proffered nine forest zones in India under which they had coal reserves. Assess them, the coal bodies offered, and tell us which areas we can mine in and which we can’t. The idea was that the assessment could basically give the go-ahead for mining in certain areas, so slicing out the time and money spent applying for unlikely mining approvals.
The environment ministry accepted. Of the nine forest zones, they identified 37% as having particularly dense forest cover, and as supporting particularly rich biodiversity. From now on, said Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, applications to mine the 222 coal blocks that lay underneath these richly biodiverse areas would not be entertained by his ministry. The areas were ‘no-go’ zones. In the remaining 63% of these forest areas (which covered 383 coal blocks), applications for environmental clearance would be entertained as in the usual manner.
Good afternoon. How much for a forest?, editors choice
A coal mine in Jharia, Jharkhand. The area was previously covered in a thick belt of forest, inhabited by tribal communities
The coal industry went mad. The move put 619 million tonnes of coal a year out of reach, and the IPO of Coal India Ltd was already in the pipeline for later in the year. They had been aiming for looser protocols on mining applications, and instead they had ended up with the same processes, but in a smaller area. “It blew up in their faces, basically,” says Preethi Herman, a campaigner with Greenpeace India following the developments.
The coal ministry began to contact ministries of power and infrastructure, painting the move as one that would inhibit economic growth and development, and rallying them to push for the restrictions to be removed.
It’s worth pointing out here that Ramesh is by no means a Luddite. Three hundred mining applications have been approved in the last 30 years versus only 24 rejected (though Ramesh has only been environment minister since May 2009). In trying to strike a balance between development and environment – that is, striving that development be sustainable – Ramesh has explicitly stated that mining must continue.
“They [mine owners] should try to maximise the potential of mining areas instead of trying to access ‘no go’ zones,” he said in March 2010.
Yet the protected zones began to crumble away, as pressure on the Prime Minister to do something about Ramesh’s stand came both directly from the coal ministry, and indirectly from the immense coal mining lobby that spans the country – identified by many as being hand-in-hand with the state forest departments for the purpose of mining approvals.
In May, the Prime Minister’s Office ordered a review of the ‘no-go’ zones, first stating a concern that the areas could turn into breeding grounds for Naxalism, before talking mainly about how many millions of rupees worth of coal could be extracted from the no-go areas.
India gets over half its electricity from burning coal, and the link between a developing economy and an unlimited access to the country’s coal seams must have been stridently made in the corridors of power.
The awkward environmental restrictions fell just in time. Less than three weeks before the IPO was due to launch, the Law Ministry wrote that the no go zones were, ironically, in conflict with the forest conservation acts and appeared to have “no sound legal basis”.
On the same day as the shares floated and foreign investors, reassured of the economic stability of coal in India, rushed in to buy, a conference on biodiversity began in Nagoya, Japan. The tenth Conference of Parties (COP10) on 18th and 19th October was the stage for the presentation of a report on The Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity (TEEB), a three-year study into the economic value of ecological health. It called for the loss of biodiversity to be addressed as an issue of equal importance to climate change and to be tackled in parallel with it. It was welcomed most heartily by Jairam Ramesh.
“India is planning a TEEB for India study to assess its natural capital. We are committed to developing a framework for green national accounts that we can implement by 2015,” stated Ramesh in a note prepared in advance of the Nagoya summit.
Placing a market value on natural assets is a fascinating idea and one that shall certainly be subjected to vociferous debate. Those arguing for it might brandish this story of the no go zones as proof that it is economic values that shall most often triumph, in the political battles of a developing country. And it seems we are short-sighted: importance is always be placed on the economic gains that are most immediate rather than long-term considerations.
“TEEB aims to provide strong incentives for countries to ensure decisions are not solely based on short-term gains, but build foundations for sustainable and inclusive development,” Ramesh continued, in the explanation of his decision to conduct a TEEB study in India.
So what of the biodiversity that the environment ministry is trying to protect? Broadly, India has 7-8% of the world’s recorded plant and animal species in only 2.4% of the world’s area. This makes it one of 17 “mega-diverse” countries in the world. Ten different biogeographic zones can be found across the country, from deserts to wetlands, Malabar coast to Himalayan peaks. As far as forests go, this includes 16 major and 251 subtypes of forest, though it’s not yet clear which types the proposed no-go areas correlate or correlated with.
Placing a value on biodiversity could also go some way towards describing the value of mature forests as opposed to new cover. “We will assure that we will plant 2.5 times more trees where we cut trees,” said coal minister Shriprakash Jaiswal in October, as the whittling away of the protected zones continued. A draft mission for government action on climate change, released during this ministerial battle, allocated 440 billion rupees to double the amount of land taken up for afforestation. Of course, replanted trees do not compare to ancient forest in terms of the amount of biodiversity they support.
Millions of livelihoods in India are maintained by its biodiversity and it also carries great cultural importance. Not least in the tiger, the endangered national animal of India, and in the elephant, the national heritage animal. In addition to thick forest cover, the no go zones also incorporated some known ‘corridors’ of animal movement between forest areas.
For now the environment ministry is again being painted as anti-development. In late October the coal ministry wrote in a Cabinet note that “any new criteria at this stage that causes us to reassess our resource base will not only push the power generation growth plans of the country but will also have its effects in the future when the climate change issue becomes more stringent.”
Whether the coal ministry will be successful in its battle to leave no coal seam unturned, using climate change as an argument for cutting down forests certainly breaks new ground.
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2010/11/10/good-afternoon-how-much-for-a-forest/
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Some Good inititaives: Kaziranga
Kaziranga National Park found to have highest tiger density on Earth.
A joint study carried out by Aaranyak, a society for biodiversity conservation in Northeast India, and the Assam Forest Department, has shown that Kaziranga National Park has the highest density of wild tigers in the world.
The report, officially released by Mr Rockybul Hussain, Minister of Environment and Forest, Assam on April 29, is the result of a study carried out during January-March 2009.
“It reveals that Kaziranga National Park has the highest density of tigers compared to any known tiger habitats anywhere in the world,” confirmed the Minister.
According to the study, which was conducted using the ‘camera trap’ method of tiger estimation and covered an area of 144 sq km of the central and western part of the park, there are 32 tigers per 100 sq km of park area. It also revealed that 39 individual tigers, including a one-year-old cub, were photographed in the study area during the 50 day photo-trapping exercise.
However, all tigers are unlikely to be photo-trapped in the study area and using scientific method called capture recapture, as many as 47 of tigers were estimated in the study area (144 km sq). The cubs below one year of age were eliminated in density analysis.
Tiger Habitats Country Tiger Density/100 km2 Data Source
Kaziranga* India 32.64 Present study
Table: Comparison of tiger density amongst different tiger habitats in India and Nepal (estimated using Half MMDM approach).
The previously highest recorded density of tiger in a wildlife park was 19.6 tigers /100 sq km recorded in the Corbett Tiger Reserve in northern India. The usual density of tiger varies from 3-12 tigers/100 sq km in different tiger reserves throughout India.
The study team comprised members of Aaranyak and officials and staff of Kaziranga National Park. The Aaranyak’s team worked under the supervision of Dr Bibhab Kumar Talukdar with park staff coordinated by director S N Buragohain. Aaranyak’s Biologist M Firoz Ahmed led the Aaranyak team in the field.
The study was made possible by funding to Aaranyak from the UK’s David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation and The Rufford Small Grants Foundation.
The latest study confirms the belief that Kaziranga’s alluvial grassland provides optimal habitats for tigers. Earlier, Karanth and Nichols (1998) had indicated that tigers attained their highest possible density in Kaziranga. The present study, however, recorded almost twice the density of tigers in the park compared to the last estimation made by Karanth and Nichols.
Prey animals: One of the key reasons for the high tiger density in Kaziranga is an abundance of prey animals including hog deer, sambar, swamp deer and wild buffalo.
Research Team Recommendations
1.Regular monitoring of tigers and prey populations in Kaziranga NP to understand population dynamics and ecology in such a high-density tiger habitat.
2.Considering the high density of tigers, human-tiger conflict on the fringe areas of the park may increase. Park management needs to take the necessary short-term and long-term steps to mitigate such conflicts.
3.Train more frontline staff in the park in regular monitoring of camera traps and also in recording sighting data of tigers and other animals on a regular basis. The same data could be used to determine the trend of tiger sighting over time and space in the park.
What Next?
1.Estimate prey density in the Kaziranga NP while we continue to monitor the tiger population for second consecutive year.
2.Sample eastern range of the park to understand pattern of tiger density in the park.
3.Understand the population dynamics of prey and predators in the Kaziranga NP in the long run.
“We believe that this study has rekindled the hope for the protection of the tiger which is fast disappearing from its range states throughout the world. It has also thrown up an opportunity to carry out an extensive tiger monitoring study covering the entire area of Kaziranga National Park. The outcome of the study has proved that joint effort by dedicated forest officials and a scientifically credible NGO with the technical input from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun can make a difference.” Said Mr Rockybul Hussain, Minister of Environment and Forest.
http://greencamp.in/2010/08/kaziranga-the-best-tiger-habitat-in-the-world/
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