The legacy of a legend is the memory of a great example. This is what could describe Dr Alan Rabinowitz and his amazing efforts, which went in creating Hukawng Valley Tiger Res¬erve, Myanmar — the la¬rgest tiger reserve in the world. This tiger reserve area is 60 per cent of all the 41 tiger reserves of India combined.
Rabinowitz is one of the world’s foremost big cat experts, who researched extensively on jaguar conservation. A PhD in wildlife, he is now the president and CEO of Panthera — an organisation working for big cats around the world with the mission to ensure the future of wild cats through scientific leadership and global conservation action. Now, his prime concern is Asia.
The man, who was successful in convincing the army regime of Myanmar for creating the Hukawng tiger reserve, was during his chi¬ldhood a student of a special school, due to his stuttering. He believes that this deficiency brought him into the world of wildlife and to those animals that did not speak the language of humans, and in return, he put in tremendous efforts for them and became their voice to the world.
Rabinowitz has been fighting a long personal battle of fatal chronic lymphatic leukemia. Yet he has continued his work with the same zeal. He has not bothered to look at the boundaries of nations nor the diplomatic relationships of the countries. His concern was just one — saving the forest and its species, for which he even established dialogues with army regime of Myanmar, which is isolated from the rest of the world. 22,000 sq km area of Hukawng tiger reserve is an empty forest — with not more than 50 tigers left and a lot of pressure of gold mining, poaching and human interferences.
Jim Corbett National Park, whi¬ch is about 7 per cent of the entire Hukawng, has perhaps double or even triple the number of tigers. This man is combating his own health, convincing a difficult country and trying to revive an empty forest. Instead of working in small manageable tiger dominated landscapes, he is dedicated to save a forest devoid of species — why?
That is because Rabinowitz believes that saving species within hard boundaries and limited space will be akin to building mega zoos, which would eventually lead to genetic depression, the doom of that particular species. Hence, his vision is creating genetic corridors that would serve as walkways for animals to move from one refuge to another, exchanging their gene pools in the process for a healthy population.
After Rabinowitz’s finished his jaguar research, he brought in a new shift in traditional conservation — the concept of genetic corridors. To take the argument further, he believes that for¬ests that are deemed healthy and teeming with tiger populations may just disappear if their genetic health is not taken care of.
Recently, there has been some such work in the areas of Western Ghats; however, there is still a lot to be done in central India and Terai forest. An area across Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh is one of the biggest and natural forest patch that we have. Companies keep their eyes on the natural wealth buried below these jungles. This area is rich in iron, coal and aluminium. In a booming economy these natural resources play a very significant role. But precisely for the same reason wildlife and nature are at stake. Many a times, the Environment Impact Assessment reports all¬ow devastating projects on the basis that there is no presence of any “Schedule wildlife protected species”!
It could be possible that today these jungles may be empty like the Hukawng Valley but if there is any scope to save many species from extinction, it lies here. Only these chunks of forests can serve as corridors and holding areas for wildlife in the future.
So can the work done by Rabinowitz to save the jungles of Myanmar be a way forward for us too?
