What’s in store for wildlife?

India received laurels for Project Tiger, launched in 1973 to protect the national animal the Royal Bengal tiger. After its success, many more projects to conserve endangered animals were started. The projects not only aim to protect wildlife but also help vegetation of Protected Areas (PA) to flourish. In its initial days, wildlife management faced severe problems in controlling poaching. With support from organisations like the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and the World Wide Fund for Nature, some degree of success was achieved. With successive amendments to the Wildlife Act that prescribe severe punishments and the formation of the National Tiger Conservation Authority in 2005, it is safe to say that the poaching problem is under control now. Also, the deployment of locals in Anti-Poaching Camps has added to the decline in poaching activities.

With all these measures in place, as time passes, the task to protect the wildlife continues to face new challenges.

Vast tracts of forest land have been released unabated to encroachers and beneficiaries of Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA)— for which the onus lies on states— and for development projects including highways, railways, mines and dams— onus lies on NBWL and SBWL. This has resulted in the fragmentation and shrinking of wildlife habitats outside PAs. Also, the release of forest land disrupts the traditional wildlife corridors that animals use to move to their seasonal foraging and breeding grounds. In search of migratory routes to these grounds, the animals move into human settlements, trample crops, damage property and kill people and cattle— the result is a severe Man-Animal Conflict (MAC).

The wildlife management spends a huge amount to resolve MACs by building barriers along the boundaries between the PAs and the farmlands with different models but animals are smarter; they find ways to overcome them.

The management also spends money to control poaching and forest fires and to meet water scarcity in summer. They don’t look into the problems that have caused the wild animals to migrate.

Another issue is the continuation of age-old practices of wildlife management. Since 1973, the practice has been to not interfere with the vegetation in PAs. Silviculture is not followed. This non-interference has resulted in greying of forests with matured trees and the accumulation of dead fuelwood loads in PAs, inviting frequent fires, especially in deciduous forest regions. These fires open PAs to exotic invasive weeds, like Lantana camara, Eupatorium odorata and Parthenium hysterophorus, that do not allow grass or trees to regenerate in their thickets and obstruct the movement of wild animals. The exotic weeds are estimated to have occupied more than 75-80 % of the forest floors of PAs like Bandipur, Nagarahole and BR hills (Karnataka); Wayanad (Kerala) and Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (Tamil Nadu). The weed invasion and forest fires cause a dearth of fodder for the herbivores, forcing them to move out in search of food.

The animals like the big cats that have assured protection in PAs have multiplied in number. With increased competition for resources, they naturally move out of PAs in search of food and to breed. The animals, both herbivores and carnivores, cross over the barriers like cattle-proof trenches, old rail fences, solar fences and rubble and stone walls etc built along PAs’ boundary and create havoc in adjoining farms. PA management is forced to capture and relocate the animals. Although these mostly include elephants, tigers and leopards, there are incidents where bison, bears, monkeys and pea-fowls, too, have done the damage, but it is the wild boar that the farming communities fear the most. Hundreds of boars raid the crops at night and terrorise the farmers.

There have been fewer efforts to stop the shrinking and fragmentation of the wildlife habitats outside PAs— Onus on NBWL, SBWL and the states. The management is not in a hurry to improve the fodder resources of PAs by removing the exotic weeds. There is no plan to analyse the Carrying Capacity of the wildlife habitats to limit the animal population within the PA’s capacity— no habitat can support an unlimited population of wild animals and the onus to do this lies on PAs.

All these are the root causes for all the present MACs.

The questions that need to be asked are: For how long can wildlife management contain animals in PAs with barriers? What and where can the herbivores feed on, when the forest floors no longer hold fodder because of the invasion by exotic weeds? Where should the ever-increasing number of wild animals have to move when forests are fragmented and corridors disrupted? And for how long or how many animals will the authorities translocate? The million-dollar question for wildlife management in India, given the present scenario, is: What is in store for the wildlife?

(The writer is a retired Indian Forest Service officer)