AFTER THE debacle in Sariska, it may appear fanciful to claim that there were as many as 80,000 tigers in any period of India's history. On the face of it this is a fantastic figure, but it is a very real one. Every one of those tigers was physically verified, because the count refers not to the number of tigers in the wild, but to those shot and killed between 1875 and 1925.

India's wildlife has been tragically decimated and the story is contained in the extensive narratives of nature historians, who have also recorded the slaughter of some 150,000 leopards and 200,000 wolves during the five decades in question. It was an era of death sport, made more devastating by the rise of the gun.

India has entered a new century at a time of great awareness about the environment. There is an unprecedented global scientific endeavour to understand the effects of human actions on climate, biodiversity, and the prospects of survival of species like the tiger. Yet, as the reputed home of the largest number of surviving tigers in the wild, India is less confident of protecting its natural wealth in the new century. The nation's forests continue to be haunted by the gun and the animal trap.

The enfeeblement of environment protection in India and the deficit of science in conservation practices have been brought to the fore by the decline of the region's most charismatic wild resident.

Despite some acclaimed successes, the paralysis of the three-decade-old Project Tiger blew into a controversy in Sariska, one of the oldest reserves. Whether Sariska is an isolated disaster created by the forest bureaucracy or a symptom of a larger disease that has silently ravaged many more reserves will soon be revealed, when the national tiger census is concluded.

Yet, the spectre of local extinction of the tiger in many more parts of the country is not an unsubstantiated doomsday forecast any longer. It may be imminent, calling for immediate and decisive action on the part of the Government in New Delhi and by all the States.

Fortunately, the Centre has constituted a five-member Task Force to suggest ways to strengthen tiger conservation. The panel, headed by the Director of the Centre for Science and Environment, Sunita Narain, has as its members former Project Tiger head, H.S. Panwar, and members of the National Board for Wildlife, Valmik Thapar, Madhav Gadgil, and Samar Singh. The Task Force is currently engaged in assessing the threats and challenges to the tiger in various reserves and is required to submit its report by July 19.

"We are going to have a very difficult time ahead," says Mr. Thapar, providing a cryptic prognosis for the tiger. If the tiger and the forests are to have a future, there must be political will to reconcile the needs of communities that live near the protected areas with those of forests and wildlife.

India's tiger conservation effort is of global significance, as it has one of the last significant populations of the big cat in the wild. Four other acknowledged sub-species (besides the Bengal) survive in relatively minuscule numbers mostly across Asia while a few are thought to exist in Russia and China (some scientists think there are five sub-species besides the Bengal). Three sub-species, the Caspian, Bali, and Javan tigers went extinct in the 1940s. In the subcontinent, Pakistan lost its last known tiger a century ago.

Saving the Bengal tiger, as Project Tiger director Rajesh Gopal acknowledges in a magazine interview, will mean saving everything that is part of the forest. For that very reason, the campaign for the tiger will test the mettle of India's political leadership, though it has largely failed in making a success out of Project Tiger in the last decade. Indira Gandhi and then Rajiv Gandhi were personally committed to saving the forests and the tiger, and they enforced protection laws vigorously leading to a recovery of tiger populations in the two decades since the project was launched in 1973. Such a passionate defence of wild India at the highest levels, many conservationists believe, disappeared with the advent of economic liberalisation in the 1990s.

Mr. Thapar observes in his book Battling for Survival: India's Wilderness Over Two Centuries (Oxford University Press) that in the relentless pursuit of statistically determined "growth," forests have become the prime targets of various lobbies. "Vast amounts of timber, marble, gems, manganese, iron ore, bauxite and so many minerals" lie in the forests, making them the richest part of India. In the decade since 1991 there was severe deforestation and a shockingly high tally of seizures of tiger skins and body parts. In Mr. Thapar's view, the tiger had, during this phase, also lost its traditional `cult' image among younger villagers. They were less committed to protection and more receptive to the idiom of the marketplace. They wanted money to be able to consume, throwing the field open to poachers.

Protected areas today constitute a mere 4 per cent out of the 20 per cent forest cover, much of it degraded and facing increasing pressure from development projects. They are often at the mercy of political considerations which weigh heavily both at the Centre and in the States when "development" projects or public demands are considered. Pench tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh is a case in point.

In a report in Seminar in 2000, Mr. Thapar documented the decisions made by the Inspector General of Forests (Wildlife), Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), which wilfully violated the Wildlife Protection Act (the law that the department is expected to enforce). A communication sent to Madhya Pradesh in 1995 by the IGF recommended the grant of fishing rights in the Totladoh reservoir in the core of the Pench Tiger Reserve, purportedly because people claimed traditional rights to fish there. Ironically, the dam was "only 10 or 15 years old."

The Pench controversy pitted the Madhya Pradesh Government against Maharashtra, which controlled part of the reservoir and wanted no intrusion in the form of boat-based fishing. The result has been prolonged litigation brought by various parties. In policy terms, this is a glaring example of the confusion and political manoeuvres that surround the implementation of wildlife laws in the country. Project Tiger did not cover itself with glory in Pench and records indicate that it was eager to facilitate the scheme rather than protest against the pressure on the heart of a reserved area.

The Tiger Task Force, therefore, would have to reopen several cases where the protectors abandoned their role to understand the working of forest and wildlife laws. Its report can serve a useful purpose only by suggesting ways to plug the present loopholes that are exploited to concoct environment impact assessments and secure licenses for non-forest activities such as construction of roads and clearing of forests to enable mining.

Poor science

If habitat destruction has seriously affected tiger populations, scientists believe with some justification that there is a serious dearth of science in conservation. In a research paper published by Animal Conservation, nine investigators led by K. Ullas Karanth refer to the shaky basis of the tiger census in India. The paper describes the census methodology based on pugmarks as lacking in scientific rigour, as misleading and hence incapable of advancing conservation. On the contrary, the paper contends, the unscientific pugmark census has led to poor conservation practices; inflated tiger counts were put out in 1994 despite mounting evidence of deteriorating protection and increased poaching, doing more harm than good for the tiger.

An alternative approach advocated by the researchers is the spatial distribution method for the national tiger habitat of about 3 lakh square kilometres, which would determine presence or absence of tigers in defined geographical areas. This option would rely on statistical sampling backed by meticulous recording of the sampling effort, but will not attempt a "total count of every tiger" that has been the policy goal so far. Similar intensive methods to record tiger presence are proposed for individual reserves, where field personnel can rely on encounters with tiger track sets or scat. Advanced methods such as study of prey densities within demarcated areas (transect lines on the ground) and use of camera traps are suggested for high value sites.

Such science will prove invaluable in arriving at an optimal strategy to monitor tiger populations. Data that is critical for the success of conservation programmes will emerge and provide an opportunity to further put the rival census theories to the test.

In the long term, the tiger's survival depends on the socio-political landscape. Reducing conflicts between the tiger and local communities is a major goal and it requires a healthy spatial separation, rather than enhanced chances of contact. The Tiger Task Force is unlikely to speak in one voice on this issue, as opinions differ on whether communities should be located within the already diminished habitat of the tiger or be rehabilitated in buffer areas where feasible. In some reserves, such as Sariska, there is no buffer, precluding such solutions. The remnants of the forests hosting tigers are today fragmented and raise the question whether they can survive if commercial interests decide to exploit communities that are granted free access to gather produce. The alternative could perhaps be the formation of anti-poaching protection forces made up of members drawn from the local communities who will work with newly created wildlife service wings in the States.