Indian Tigers in Danger of Extinction
11/25/99
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Title: Indian tigers in danger of extinction
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: November 25, 1999
Byline: Mian Ridge
An alarm sounded around the world when India's tiger population was
found to be teetering on the brink of extinction in the early 1970s.
In 1972, the government formed Project Tiger to protect the tiger
forests and banned shooting any of India's remaining 1,800 tigers.
Funds flowed in from all over the world and by 1989 the number of
tigers in India had climbed to 4,300.
Today, it stands at around 3,500 and, once again, conservationists
are worried. Shooting for recreation is a distant memory from the British
Raj, but there are now other, less easily controlled threats to India's
big cats.
Population growth and rural development such as the construction
of mammoth dams in some areas are destroying the natural habitats of
tigers. Although trafficking in wildlife products is banned in
India, poaching of tigers for their skin, bones and body parts used in
Chinese medicine has exacerbated the problem.
``There was a certain euphoria when the number of tigers built up after
the forming of Project Tiger, but now we see it falling again with
habitat destruction and an increase in demand for tiger parts,'' said
M.K. Ranjitsinh, director of the World Wildlife Fund Tiger
Conservation Program.
Conservationists say tigers could be extinct by 2010 if steps to save
them are not intensified.
``If we fail to win some of today's battles, tigers will be virtually
extinct by the time of the next Year of the Tiger in 2010,'' Nature
magazine quoted Valmik Thapar, vice chairman of a tiger conservation
group, as saying.
Shrinking forests
Conservationists say it is important to maintain the tiger population at
a certain level for the sake of the ecosystem.
``The tigers are a lifeline for an ecosystem. Everywhere there is a
good tiger habitat it is the sole source of a river system,'' Project
Tiger director P.K. Sen said. ``If our rivers die what happens then? No
drinking water, no irrigation, no fresh water. The soil is eroded
without tree cover and civilization in the area is destroyed.''
The best example of the benefits of tiger forests until recently was the
Narmada River, which flows through Kanha Tiger Reserve in the central
state of Madhya Pradesh. The reserve supplied water to the Narmada even
when other sources failed. But the building of a large dam
there is destroying huge tracts of pristine forest. ``Whenever you
construct a dam, a reservoir or a hydroelectric power plant it is
always on forest land,'' Sen said. The Ministry of Environment and
Forests says 19 percent of India's land mass is forested, of which
nearly half is degraded by intensive farming, livestock grazing and
forest fires. It has formulated a National Forestry Action Program,
which aims to see 33 percent of India forested in 20 years.
While Project Tiger has succeeded in protecting about 25 of India's
forest reserves, it is the unprotected areas of forest that are
most at risk.
Militancy killing wildlife
Another factor responsible for the fall in India's tiger population is
the rise of insurgency in some parts of the country such as the northeast
and Andhra Pradesh in the south.
In Andhra Pradesh, Ranjitsinh says, left-wing extremists called Naxalites have
provoked villagers to kill tigers because the government was slow to pay
villagers for cattle killed by tigers. ``The Naxalites told locals the
government wasn't doing anything so they should get rid of the tigers
themselves. Over 28 animals, both tigers and leopards, were killed,'' he said.
The Wildlife Protection Society of India estimates that at least 440
tigers have been killed in India in the past six years and believes that
in many cases the bodies were sent abroad for use in Chinese medicine.
``After 1990, when the numbers began to slide down again, we found tigers
were being killed for their body parts,'' Sen said.
Tiger parts have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for more than 1,000
years to treat everything from skin disease and convulsions to laziness. As
China's population has exploded and its people have become more affluent,
demand has risen.
Curbing poaching can be difficult because, unlike the past when only tiger skins
and trophies were being sold, today all the parts of a tiger are being smuggled
out of the country.
``What is often forgotten is that it is population growth, mounting human
pressure, that lies behind all threats to tigers,'' Ranjitsinh said. ``Unless
this pressure eases, wildlife will always be in danger.''