An unfinished war for survival

With the success of Project Tiger in the 1980s, a complacency has set in regarding the survival in the wild of this beautiful beast. Saving Wild Tigers faithfully captures the current situation where the tiger continues to face many threats, writes RANJIT LAL.

THE battle to save the tiger has gone on for one hundred years now and aided by a handful of committed (but increasingly desperate) wildlife generals, the magnificent big cat is still fighting back. This book traces the course of this war through the writings of those men and women - most of whom never believed that the tiger would survive in the wild by the year 2000.

Valmik Thapar, who took up the cause of the tiger more than 25 years ago, has put together a remarkable collection of essays and extracts spanning the last one hundred years, which gives us a unique glimpse into the story of tiger conservation.

At the turn of the last century (1900) there was concern regarding the fast vanishing wilderness areas of India. In the 1920s, E. P. Stebbing was advocating the creation of sanctuaries and closed areas, where hunting would be banned or regulated. Between 1875 and 1925 an estimated 80,000 tigers were hunted down and every writer commented on how the animals (and the jungles) seemed sparser than they had been 10 or 20 years previously. F. W. Champion worried about the new powerful rifles of the time, and did not want cars allowed in reserved forests. Jim Corbett firmly believed that men made tigers into man-eaters (because of poor shooting). But even as these voices spoke out, the British, the Indian maharajas and the elite continued to go on their extravagant hunts, bagging dozens of tigers and complaining that this was nothing compared to what could have been bagged in the early days. As yet, the carnage had not even begun.

The 1940s to 1960s were doomsday years for the tiger. World War II created heavy pressure on the forests and apart from stripping them of timber, the contractors stripped them of tigers and other wildlife too. Then came Independence, and the heady years after, where everyone really went ballistic and massacred tigers (and other wildlife) on a scale that, as George Schaller writes, only matched the great bison hunts in America. Also, forests were cleared for agriculture ("crop protection" guns distributed like ladoos) and the resettlement of refugees from Pakistan. The elite, guided and encouraged by shikar companies, roared into the jungles from all over the world, to shoot tigers with powerful rifles from the safety of their jeeps.

The carnage brought horror and revulsion and a flurry of conservation-based writing in the 1960s and 1970s. Richard Perry felt that by the early 1960s only 4,000 tigers were left in India, and E. P. Gee brought out his book The Wildlife of India in 1964, which gave conservation the public attention it deserved. George Schaller began a scientific study of tigers in Kanha, which resulted in his classic The Deer and The Tiger, the introduction and conclusions of which form the finest pieces in this book. Eventually, the matter was considered serious enough to warrant a ban on tiger shooting and later, the framing of the Wildlife (Protection) Act. Guy Mountfort writes about the launching of the famous Project Tiger in the early 1970s (as does M. Krishnan); Billy Arjan Singh on maintaining the sanctity of our protected areas, Kailash Sankhala on the horrific skin trade, and S. P. Shahi on the battle to save wildlife in wilder Bihar. Ullas Karanth pleads that at least one per cent of India's land area be completely dedicated to tigers and wildlife. Most of the pieces are extracts from books or papers written and presented by these people, but blend together well here to match the theme of the book.

There are also contributions on the state of tiger conservation abroad: in Indo-China, in Java (where it is now extinct), in Central Asia and Siberia. In Roaring Back, Steve Galster and Karin Vaud Eliot write about Operation Amba - the scheme to save the Siberian tiger - from which we in India can surely learn many lessons.

In India, with the success of our own Project Tiger, came complacency - and just how dangerous this complacency was came to light in the early 1990s, when news of tiger massacres from within protected areas (such as Thapar's beloved Ranthambor) came to light. It was Geoffrey Ward who blew the lid off this disaster-in-the-happening and the threat has still not abated. Tiger parts (and those of other big cats and animals) are still in great demand for traditional Chinese medicine: Valmik Thapar got a rude awakening to the year 2000 when news of a huge seizure of skins and bones reached him. "In over 25 years I have seen only 28 living leopards and here I was surrounded by 50 dead ones", he writes, putting matters into chilling perspective.

There are also new threats - those brought about by the era of so-called liberalisation, which is threatening tiger habitats as never before. The last piece in the book, The Future of the Tiger in the Twenty First Century by P. K. Sen (Director, Project Tiger) is a bitter and damning indictment of our diabolical treatment of, and attitude towards, this beautiful beast. There are less than 3,000 tigers left in the wild, says Sen, and today, "no one wants the tiger to survive, be it politician, bureaucrat, industrialist, human activist or villager". We can only hope that this is not true and that this book will not become an epitaph for that "large-hearted gentleman", but a catalyst for further positive action. For anyone willing to take up cudgels on the tiger's behalf, or merely wanting to learn about the bitter, desperate unfinished one hundred year old war, this book is not to be missed.

Saving Wild Tigers 1900-2000,

The Essential Writings, Edited by Valmik Thapar,

Permanent Black, Price not mentioned.

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