Biased Report

After tearing to shreds Kaziranga’s conservation story and then getting hit by a ban order, the BBC is now eating some humble pie though it is far from tendering any formal apology. In a letter to India’s National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) recently, Dr Julian Hector, head of BBC’s natural history unit has reportedly expressed willingness to “discuss all concerns” in detail. While lauding the NTCA’s successes in tiger conservation, he is learnt to have written that the BBC documentary may have made this good work that much harder. India did attract much negative publicity in February last year after the BBC aired a documentary titled ‘Killing for Conservation’, portraying the rangers of Kaziranga National Park as a trigger-happy bunch widely abusing their “shoot to kill” powers. In the name of deterring poachers with excessive firepower, these foresters engaged in torture and extra-judicial killings with local communities, particularly tribals, bearing the brunt — alleged BBC’s South Asia chief Justin Rowlatt in that report. Claiming to expose the “dark side” of Kaziranga’s success, the one-sided documentary simplistically portrayed it as “the park that shoots people to protect rhinos”, while using some dodgy statistics to buttress its story. A host of issues were conveniently overlooked — like the mis-representation of immunity provided to foresters as “shoot to kill” powers, how the dice has always been loaded in favour of heavily armed poachers having informers among local communities and enjoying close links with militants and gun-runners, and how the park authority has still managed to make a success of the tiger project and steadily increase its rhino count despite frequent poaching by a well organised and determined network. Had Rowlatt’s ‘investigative’ report dealt with the genuine compulsions of using largely military means to safeguard wildlife in green pockets virtually under siege as well as thriving international markets in China and South-East Asia paying steep prices for wild animal body parts, the BBC documentary would have enjoyed greater credibility. It could also have earned some credit here had it focused upon the poor conviction rate of poachers in Assam. But all it did was to drive a wedge between foresters and conservationists in the State, in turn prompting the Central government to banish BBC from reporting in any national park or wildlife sanctuary in India for five years. Hopefully, if there is a rapprochement now, we can look forward to more balanced reporting on wildlife issues and conservation models.