Hunting for answers

The forest department has accepted that the tiger population at Panna reserve has fallen, but it differs with locals and experts on the reasons for the disappearance of the big cats. Chetan Chauhan reorts. See graphic

Updated on: Dec 23, 2008, 01:25:45 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Panna

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The forest department has accepted that the tiger population at Panna reserve has fallen, but it differs with locals and experts on the reasons for the disappearance of the big cats.

Park director LK Chaudhary admitted that they hadn’t spotted a “tigress in the last three months”, but insisted that a
number of tigers were still there and they had evidence — pugmarks — to back it. But he refused to put a figure to it.

“Last year, the park was under the control of dacoits and can’t say if tigers were hunted,” Chaudhary said.

Officially, no poaching case has been reported over a decade and the fall in population has been attributed to old age.

But, locals and tiger experts, like Dr Raghu Chandawat, differ. “For many years, it was a free-for-all at Panna. One could enter the reserve with a weapon and return with a catch. Things have improved now, but we hear that there are only a few tigers left,” said Bhishan Singh Patel, head of the powerful Patel community.

Community leader Dhani Ram Patel had sought the help of dacoits in 2006 after the forest department confiscated the foodgrain they’d harvested from the banks of Ken river inside the park. Led by Mohan Singh Patel, the dacoits forced the forest guards out. “It had a huge impact on tiger population,” Chaudhary claimed. It was in July this year that the department got back the park, after Tokia was killed and Dhani Ram surrendered. The park opened in October but no tigress has been sighted.

Bhishan Singh didn't accept that dacoits brought on the Panna crisis. “Patels are not meat-eaters and considered protectors of animals,” Shyaminder Singh, who has a resort on banks of Ken, said. Most of the big cats disappeared years ago, but the department was in denial, they claimed.

The Wildlife Institute of India, too, has said not more than one tiger is left in the core area. “We’ve got a picture of a tiger. There may be one more, but most of the tigers are gone,” said a WII scientist who didn’t want to be identified.

Asked if all 24 tigers, according to 2006 count, had died of natural causes, he said it wasn't possible. “It appears to be the result of poaching and natural death.”

The team will radio collar the only tiger so it can be tracked through GPS when the two tigresses are relocated by February. Enclosures are being readied to habituate the tigresses before releasing them into the wild, said Chaudhary. “The success of Sariska will be replicated,” a WII scientist said.

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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