Tiger Conservation: Urban Assault

Rising urbanization all over the World is seen as a gauge in a positive perspective...a gleaming example of development. 

An article on the UNDP website terms mega cities as centers of learning, culture, and innovation. Besides this, it surmises that these population silos are wealth/resource generators and production centers, and therefore of immense importance to human settlements connected with them. It also mentions that these silos boost holistic progress, look after the well-being of the societies, address poverty, tackle pollution, and create infrastructure.  This is UNDPs own view of urbanization which many may not agree with.

Urban Ghetto

Chaotic Traffic

The Rat Race

This is a constricted perspective of human development indices because we do not seek more pliable alternatives. The article does mention the poor quality of urban development that creates economic disparities, pollution, further poverty, hardship, and diseases, and most of them are environmental disasters. 

We all have realized this anomaly prevailing in the major cities bursting at the seams due to overpopulation and unchecked migration from suburbs, smaller towns, and now deep interiors. 

Yes, we all know this except the developers and those who reap huge benefits in terms of political agenda and the businesses amassing wealth. These are the privileged ones that unfortunately take to the helm and become city planners, developers, ruling politicians, esteemed citizens, and active propagandists that never fail to advocate reckless urbanization at any cost.  

The fall out of urbanized ghettos is limited to their surroundings and to some extent to the neighborhoods. 

Think carefully! 

In order to sustain one infrastructure another extended or connected is required...and then another till the network pathway leads to the deep interiors where our rural societies subsist on the bare minimum with rational utilization of natural resources, and where most of our tiger reserves or natural places are. 

The last leg is the micro-urban center greatly susceptible to unplanned and unchecked development or linear development to be precise. It is these micro-urban centers that eventually continue to expand haphazardly denuding and eventually swallowing the reserves.   

Over looked and accorded lesser importance our tiger reserves or other ecosystems are most susceptible to this developmental threat. The phenomenon is universal pan India and is rapid. 

In Project Tiger we have an ambitious tiger conservation program that is experiencing daylight at the moment...but the impending space constriction and environmental degradation due to rapid development is going to hinder the progress in time to come. 

We are so enamored by modern development as we see in this World that we have forgotten to set limits and checks which are of utmost importance. Though the inviolate core areas are safe at the moment, the stress is on the buffer (surroundings) where the stringent policy of protection and no commercial construction should be well in place. The region surrounding the core faces huge biotic pressure from human intrusion and livestock, and the forests are nowhere secure with wood logging and sporadic poaching. The settlements here are subject to expansion and the agricultural practices are old age with low yield. An alternative more environmentally friendly alternative for agriculture should be looked for as soon as possible. One solution is to promote the nonwood handicraft industry since some communities have proficient artisans. This is being done in many places but needs greater impetus.    

The vision of wildlife and humans subsisting in harmony living in the same space  is at best romantic and purely chimerical. This idea defies practicality in modern times with limited span of ravaged forests and grasslands. Some wild animals are too sensitive to thrive along with humans anyway. And then we know the ways of contemporary human society.   

At many tiger reserves due to peer pressure, tigers move into the buffer, and some have become permanent residents. With a sparse prey base, weak crown cover, and increasing tiger population the problems are further compounded.

Munna Tiger With Kill _ Gopal Desai 

Meanwhile, the urban assault continues relentlessly with no possibility of stoppage. This is a challenge that wildlife managers and the field staff will face till some mitigating measures are put in place.

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Uday freelances as a naturalist and loves to write on tiger conservation and environmental issues.
Contact: pateluday90@hotmail.com
09755089323

Tiger Conservation Threats & History of Linear Development in India

When the British conquered India the exploitation was mostly of resources. They were physically perhaps not as brutal as the earlier invaders which were looters, Mogul megalomaniacs, bigots and usurpers. They did not sack the local populace resorting to senseless killings, rape, loot and forced conversions. Those were times of colonization and there was a purpose! 

The Raj was a manifestation of an advanced and comparatively modern civilization shaped by the industrial world of Europe. The natives were no match for them and the subjugation was complete. 

The disparity that prevailed was absolute because the Sahibs were contemporary with overpowering cultural traits, elite, educated, and yielded power that came easily with their superior force. The governance was aided by employment of  natives in various disciplines and the satraps due to whom a handful of them could easily rule over India. They had mastered structured governance in their domain, albeit India too had a structure in place being a Vedic civilization dating five thousand year but we were helpless in front of such overbearing. During the Raj, the rulers writ ran large. 

Coming straight to the point in order to exploit the natural resources better, an infrastructure was required to be put in place. With a technology considered modern in those times, they invaded the hinterland all over. This was the culmination of disastrous unplanned infrastructure building were  only thing that mattered was reaching and unearthing the natural resources and dispatching them to their homeland. 

The aim was extracting maximum economic benefit of having a jewel in the crown - a subjugated civilization that was enormously rich in natural wealth and yet timid and impoverished. With modern infrastructure in place, the enslaved country was being milked incessantly.

In post independent India we benefited from the infrastructure created by the British...and till this day we are following in the footsteps of our erstwhile masters. Though the rulers have left in the year 1947 we are still living with the slave mentality which we inherited during centuries of foreign subjugation.  

We have lost our original ethos and our civilization is badly corrupted by traits of external civilizations that at the most has made us submissive and adaptable babus.  

Post independent India, the incursion into our hinterlands became linear development a contemporary terminology that describes invasion of our lands in lieu of development. We have not hesitated to emulate our erstwhile rulers by doing exactly what they did. 

In this assault on our natural spaces we are empowered to a great extent by education in foreign language and rigidly following the Western ethos, a civilization parasitism that is simply incomprehensible and irrelevant till this day.      

1. During the Raj we had lost a large chunk of our natural spaces, and denudation and plantation of commercially viable species had already altered the remaining forever. When the rulers left, we did everything that they should not have done. And we still continue...the linear development that is taking a heavy toll of our tiger reserves, National Parks and other ecosystems continues unabated.  

The tiger is on verge of extinction so are many other species, we have no count of how many species that have become extinct, and the extent to which our forests have been denuded. Tigers need inviolate space to breed and live. But is there more space for them in this country? How many big cats does our land mass can support? Will development impact or alter our tiger reserves negatively? These are the questions conservationists are raising. 

Our geography has changed and become non-viable, climate change is affecting us badly with greater  ferocity every year, carbon footprints are enlarging every year, heat, water shortage, pollution and other life threatening factors are on increase. Yet we are in race for development that we perceive is good for us. 

Linear infrastructure development creates opening and easy accessibility to remote regions which were in an inviolate state since evolution due to inaccessibility. This impacts the linear connectivity and prevents corridor formations or makes existing corridors non-viable. Overall habitat loss and or fragmentation of our ecosystems can happen as a result of intrusion. Intruding humans can also cause problems like damage to the fragile species web of life, poaching and wood logging besides according access to foreign or alien species to overpower. Wind erosion and fires can be deadly and so can be territorial changes brought about by man. 

India is on a spree of infrastructural development, and the haste can prevent or discourage the alternative, a less damaging methodology.  The impetus on road building, new settlements, urbanization and extraction of natural resources, power projects, dams etc are  like a death knell for species survival and conservation of our natural spaces.   

It is imperative for the Nation to develop sound policies that in spite of infrastructural development circumvent or safe guards our natural spaces and preserves crucial resources besides creating a harmonious environment good enough for our well being and maintain an equilibrium.
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Uday works as a naturalist in India and writes on tigers and their conservation.
Contact: pateluday90@hotmail.com
9755089323