Big cat success story behind man-animal clash

Devika Devi, who was killed in Sunderkhal village near the Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve, became the 25th victim of a fatal tiger attack in India in the last 13 months. Chetan Chauhan reports.Conflict Zone

Updated on: Feb 16, 2011, 01:54:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Corbett

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Devika Devi, who was killed in Sunderkhal village near the Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve, became the 25th victim of a fatal tiger attack in India in the last 13 months.

Wildlife experts suggest the increase in tiger population due to the country's success in big cat management and checking poaching may have a link with the increasing tiger-human conflict, which also claimed eight tigers.

Between 2006 and 2010, the number of tigers is estimated to have risen by increase by at least 100 from 1,411.

"Increase in tiger population in areas such as Corbett is one of the reasons for the rising conflict," said Vivek Menon, chief executive officer of the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI). Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, however, says poaching and increase in human interference may be the primary causes for rising conflict.

Over the four years, tiger habitat has either remained stagnant or shrunk. "At least 10 new hotels and resorts have come up in the buffer zone of Corbett in the last few years...” says a forest official.

In Ranthambore tiger reserve — over 700 km south-west of Corbett — the rise in tiger population has not only left three persons dead in the past year, it has caused migration of at least four tigers. Tigers using traditional forest corridors, which were dense forests till 1970s, reached Kuno and Morina, Madhya Pradesh and Kota and Bharatpur in Rajasthan.

“Constant habitat destruction and illegal mining is causing the wildlife stress,” Dharmendra Kandhal, a Ranthambore-based wildlife biologist said.

Dhonia Devi, who lost her niece in a tiger attack in January, says: “...We hear tigers almost every night these days...”

The conflict is unique to tigers as they are territorial animals. “A 10-sq-km area is normally the territory marked by a tiger, where only the stronger male can live,” says PK Sen, former director of Project Tiger. The core tiger area in the country has shrunk to 31,207 sq km in 37 reserves as compared to over one lakh sq km in the 1970s.

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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