Stripes at Crossroads

 The increase in the tiger population in India demonstrates the country’s commitment to the conservation of the big cat. Tigers being territorial animals, a rise in their population in tiger reserves comes with a bigger challenge of their protection outside the protected areas. Expeditious consideration of the proposed National Tiger Conservation Authority project for management of tigers outside tiger reserves has become crucial to initiate the next level of conservation initiatives. The NTCA project based on scientific data collected from the All-India Tiger Estimation as well as human-wildlife conflict data from various states raises optimism for protection of tigers that stray out of reserves to connected landscapes already fragmented by human settlements. Infrastructure development such as construction of highways, laying of railway tracks, and establishment of educational institutions, offices, playgrounds, etc. in the fringe areas of tiger reserves causes irreversible ecological loss, fragmentation of natural landscape, and shrinking of the space for survival of tigers straying outside a protected area. Expanding the area under a tiger reserve is a problematic option, as it involves relocation of a large human population in states like Assam. Besides, the highway and railway line already constructed along these areas provide vital connectivity, and realignment comes with a heavy infrastructure cost and is not a viable solution in most cases. The fact that highway and railway connectivity in Assam and other Northeastern states are also strategically important, with these states being located in a strategic and geopolitically sensitive region, cannot be ignored even while acknowledging the problem created by fragmentation of natural landscape outside protected areas. The human-wildlife conflict in areas outside the tiger reserves is bound to worsen once protected areas reach carrying capacity, compelling tigers and other animals to stray in search of food and territory of their own. Ensuring that wildlife crossings are prioritised in infrastructure projects initiated in areas outside tiger reserves and other protected areas is critical to conserving nature’s highways while constructing highways for human transportation requirements. Subjecting the environmental impact assessment reports to rigorous scrutiny by wildlife experts can help create a strong check and balance. The steps taken by NTC for tiger conservation includes generic measures of providing assistance to States for protection, infrastructure and antipoaching operations, preparing a national database of individual tiger photos captured with camera traps; security plan that includes issuing generic guidelines forformulating a Security Plan for each tiger reserve; conducting security audit by developing a framework for carrying out assessment of security threats and formulating site specific security plan; Monitoring System for Tigers Intensive-Protection &Ecological Status; and amendment to the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 for enhancing punishment for offence in relation to the core area of a tiger reserve or where the offence relates to hunting in the tiger reserves or altering theboundaries of tiger reserves. All these measures are largely tiger reserve-centric, and the continuation and strengthening of them is crucial for strengthening conservation and safety of tigers inside the reserves, but putting in place a stronger conservation and protection regime in areas outside the protected areas is of paramount importance. Incidents of tigers straying into human settlement areas in Assam leading to incidents of lynching of tigers by mobs and human fatalities in tiger attacks have already pressed the alarm bell on human-wildlife conflict in the state and the growing threat perception for tigers straying out of protected areas. The focus needs to be on tiger dispersal areas and corridors, which requires a landscape-level approach, as measures for isolated corridor conservation will not ensure the desired level of protection for tigers in non-reserve areas. Long delays in bringing more clarity to the demarcation of Eco Sensitive Zones around protected areas and strict enforcement of rules and regulations in such buffer zones will pose a tougher challenge in the implementation of NTCA’s proposed project, Tigers Outside Tiger Reserves, even if it passes the clearance by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. ESZ notifications are crucial for regulating the development activities for meeting human needs. Raising awareness among the communities living in fringe areas of tiger reserves about the importance of corridor conservation to reduce conflict between straying tigers and humans can motivate voluntary relocation to alternative sites, provided due compensation and assistance are provided by the government to incentivise relocation to places with much better facilities and livelihood security. Helping people learn to coexist with wildlife outside protected areas must remain the core objective of awareness campaigns. Achievements of tiger reserve-centric protection measures resulting in an increase in the tiger population must not create the impression that the big cat population is brought back from the brink and there is no need to worry for its conservation now. Numbers do not say the final word on conservation success, and transforming the human-wildlife conflict zones outside protected areas into shared habitats remains the most crucial metric for the sustainability of tiger conservation.