Tigers can survive with humans, says a new study

Tigers can survive with humans, debunking the popular conception that the big cats like solitary space inside the forests, says a new study published in Journal of Applied Ecology, which can help India in better management of its tiger population.

Updated on: May 30, 2011, 16:13:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Tigers can survive with humans, debunking the popular conception that the big cats like solitary space inside the forests, says a new study published in Journal of Applied Ecology, which can help India in better management of its tiger population.

India in this March had declared that there were 1,706 tigers in India, as against 1411 in 2006, stirring a debate whether tigers and humans can survive together with the wildlife areas shrinking around the country.

The study conducted in 38,000 square kms of tiger reserves in Karnataka comes at the time when the environment ministry has released new draft guidelines to relocate 10,000 people from 41 tiger reserves in India and says the tigers can survive even in human-dominated landscapes through effective protection of the source populations.

“Our results re-enforce earlier findings that prey depletion and human disturbance are key drivers of local tiger extinctions and tigers can persist even in human dominated landscapes through effective protection of source populations,” said Ullas K Karanth, Director of Bangalore based Centre for Wildlife Studies.

The study was conducted in Malenad-Mysore Tiger Landscape (MMTL) in Western Ghats found that presence of livestock and human presence proved to be a negative influence on local tiger presence but the tigers managed to overcome these influences. “Good tiger numbers showed that they can live with humans,” Karanth said.

The study also demystifies the government claim that the tigers survive better in dense and less human populated forests.

“Tigers have persisted better in MMTL than far more extensively forested, sparsely populated and economically underdeveloped landscapes in India,” the study by six ecologists said.

And, it was because of effective protection provided to the source population.

Unlike tiger reserves in southern India, most reserve have failed to identify source populations thereby resulting in fluctuation in population figures between 2006 and 2010 tiger estimation.

A recent global conservation analysis showed that about 70 % of tigers in the wild now survive in source populations, identified on basis of anecdotal evidence, occupying just six percent of the habitat.

But, the survey done 2006 and 2007, found that landscape based conservation as propagated by the government does not help in protecting source populations and arresting current tiger population decline.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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