Sachin Kamal
After 70 years of extinction, the roar of the cheetah is back in Indian forests. On Sept 17, 2022, eight African cheetahs (5 female and 3 male) aged between 4-6 years, were introduced in Kuno National Park, Madhya Pradesh, India. It is believed that the existence of the Cheetah is important to conserve the forest ecosystem and biodiversity. As per the IUCN, only 7000 cheetahs, which are inhabitants of African grasslands, exist. The cheetah is classified as an endangered species and placed on the IUCN red list. The cheetah reintroduction project will encourage and motivate the government in the field of conservation of biodiversity. The cheetah reintroduction project will have the potential to boost the Asiatic lion transfer project. The Kuno National Park was marked as the best place to reintroduce the African cheetahs as the park already displaced 24 villages from the core zone and increased the area to 748 sq. km. It is challenging for cheetahs to survive in the Kathihar-Gir dry deciduous forest ecoregion of the Indian subcontinent; or is it challenging for the residents to survive in the region due to fear of Cheetahs?
Forest and Wildlife Conservation in India
The forests are the natural habitat of wildlife (fauna) such as tigers, deer, bears, wild cats, bulls, wild boar, etc. and also flora such as trees, shrubs, and different varieties of plants. In recent decades the human population is growing rapidly, and it negatively impacted the forests. Increasing population needs more land for human settlement and agricultural land for food production to feed the excess population which is caused by the decline of the forest cover. As per the Forest Survey 2021, only 24.62% of the total geographical area of the country is occupied by forests. As of now, India has lost 90 to 95 percent of total grassland and out of that 31 percent of the grasslands declined recently, between 2005 to 2015. The decline of natural habitats is the major reason behind the species’ downfall (Forest Survey of India).
The Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution of India, clearly mentioned that “The state shall endeavor to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard the forests and wildlife of the country.” But till 1972, there have not been any special interventions for forest conservation. The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 defines wildlife as “any animal, bees, butterflies, crustacea, fish, moths and aquatic or land vegetation which forms part of any habitat.” In 2021, there were 987 protected areas including 106 National Parks, 564 Wildlife Sanctuaries, 99 Conservation Reserves, and 218 Community Reserves. In addition, there are 55 Tiger Reserves, 18 Biosphere Reserves, and 32 Elephant Reserves. (India state of forest report, 2021). The total protected area amounts to 5.16 percent of the total geographical area, and 21.38 percent of the total forest cover of India (National Wildlife Database, Wildlife Institute of India WII).
According to the National Forest Policy of India 1952, the ideal geographical area under forests should be at least 33% of the total, to maintain ecological stability. As of 2021, the total forest cover is 24.62 percent of the geographical area of the country, unfortunately, and it is dwindling every year. Hence, the conservation of forests is an important responsibility that all of us have to undertake. A question raised by the local people of the forests is, at what cost? Does that cost have to be paid by the vulnerable sections of the society. or the forest dwellers?
Human-Wildlife Conflict in India
Human-Wildlife conflict indicates the negative interaction of wild animals and human beings that result in losses of human and animal life, and property, crops, or resources. Human-wildlife conflict is defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as “any interaction between humans and wildlife that results in negative impacts of human social, economic or cultural life, on the conservation of wildlife populations, or the environment.” The human-wildlife conflict is becoming very common in India with the entry of wild animals such as tigers, lions, or leopards into human settlements and agricultural fields.
The factors leading to human-wildlife conflict are humans coming in proximity to natural habitats of wildlife. For instance, crops are eaten by herbivores, and livestock are attacked by carnivores; these extreme losses are leading the farmers that depend on both to take measures to prevent the loss of livestock. Now, this interaction is not limited to just entering into human habitats, but it is also becoming more violent and developing a negative scenario about the wildlife and forest reserves among the local people who are living around the forest reserves.
There were two violent cases of human-wildlife conflict in recent years. The first case is from Kerala. A 15-year-old pregnant elephant was killed in May 2020 after eating a pineapple stuffed with a firecracker. With the unavailability of food in the forest, a hungry elephant enters the agriculture field and had a pineapple which was the stuffed with a firecracker. After suffering from extreme pain, the elephant stood in the river and took her last breath. The second case is from Yavatmal, Maharashtra, where a pregnant tigress was brutally burned in a cave in April 2021. A tigress with four fetuses in her womb was roaming around in search of water. First, it was attacked by the human mob and it had to take shelter in a small cave. The mob used grass and burned the entire cave with the vulnerable tigress. Both incidents are heartbreaking and tell us the urgency of mitigation of human-wildlife conflict in India.
The human-wildlife conflict in India killed 29 tigers by poaching between 2019 and 2021, while 197 tiger deaths are under scrutiny. Also, tigers killed 125 humans in reserves between 2019 and 2021. Maharashtra accounted for nearly half these deaths, with 61 mostly in the Vidarbha region. A total of 222 elephants were killed by electrocution from fences around agriculture fields between 2018-19 and 2020-21. Out of which 45 deaths were caused by trains, 29 by poachers, and 11 by poisoning. Similarly, if we talk about human causalities of conflict with animals, 1,579 humans were killed by elephants in three years (585 in 2019-20, 461 in 2020-21, and 533 in 2021-22, according to UNEP and WWF Report on Human-Wildlife Conflict 2021).
Discussion
The intensity of human-wildlife conflict increases when the number of carnivores such as tigers and leopards increase in the region. When Project Tiger was initiated in 1973, the tiger population was 268 in India. The area of government-owned forests was around 76.5 million hectares, which is approximately 33 percent of the total geographical area of the country (AK Mukharji). Here we can assume that only 268 tigers were roaring in the vast forests of India. But now, according to the 2018 tiger census, India has a tiger population of 2,967. The tiger population increased 10-fold and the forest cover went down to 21.38%. These differences add to the intensity of human-tiger conflicts. The decline of the forest area to accommodate the settlement of humans, for agricultural activities, loss of forests due to mining, and industrial purposes.
The worsening climate crises also adds to the conflict. In 2022, the Brahmaputra floods destroyed the natural habitat of the rhino. Consequently, the rhinos were roaming around the human settlements for shelter. The incidences of wildfires are rising around the world. Forest fires are a regular phenomenon in our country, often observed during summers. A total of 52,785 forest fires were detected using the MODIS sensor and 3,45,989 forest fires were detected using SNPP-VIIRS in the forest fire season from Nov 2020 to June 2021 in India (Forest Survey of India). The drought in central India causes the unavailability of grass and water in the forest territory. The scarcity of water is causing the animals to go out in search of water and food outside the forest. Local people have witnessed wildlife near residential areas in the summers. In the forests, agricultural activities were hampered by the unavailability of healthy grasslands for herbivores and which in turn affected the tigers, cheetahs, and leopards.
The forest conservation policy rejects the coexistence of humans and wildlife. The displacement process is carried out to keep human activity away from the reserved forest. These people are mostly tribal communities who conserve the forests and depend on the it for livelihood. A total of 18,493 families in 215 villages across Protected Areas (PA) in India have been displaced in the 48 years since the inception of Project Tiger. PAs comprise wildlife sanctuaries, national parks, and conservation reserves. The displacements happened from the core areas (also known as critical tiger habitats) created under the Wildlife Protection Act (WLPA), 1972 (Downtoearth, 2020).
The government should involve the local people if the policy directly affects them. In the declaration of forest reserves, the local people are always excluded. This may cause the loss of agricultural land or the displacement of the villagers. In recent years, the gram panchayat consent is compulsory for the displacement kind of activity but this remains a formality and the masses are excluded. The local citizens, tribal communities, and forest dwellers have to deal with the consequences of the protected forest policy, including death, crop losses, loss of livestock, and impact on daily livelihood activities. These reasons and the colonial approaches of the forest department cause instability in forest management and lose the support of the locals.
India witnessed the resistance of the local people against the protected areas, Locals are protesting against the wildlife sanctuaries or national parks, and people also resisting the government control over forests. Because in the national park any kind of human activity is not allowed, the collection of non-forest timber produce is restricted, and the locals can not take their cattle etc. for grazing in the reserved forest area. The increasing number of tigers has also become a reason for resistance. The successful resistance seen in Amravati, Maharashtra, where the government of Maharashtra declared the Mahendri Forest as a wildlife sanctuary. But local people, tribal communities, and other forest dwellers are agitating against the government’s decision. Under the young and dynamic leadership of Kamalnarayal Uike, people were united and protested. Due to increasing resistance from the locals, the government changed its decision and declared it as a general Protected Area (PA).
We all know that to sustain and tackle co2 emissions and to deal with climate crises we need to protect the forests as well as the wildlife. There is a question that remains, at what cost? Tribal leader Kamalnarayan Uike mentioned that there was a bike rally called by urban environmentalists and nature lovers from Amravati city in support of the Mahendri wildlife sanctuary in Amravati, but it was stopped by the tribal communities. He told them that we are not against the conservation of the forest, if you love the forest then gives your home to us to live because our villages live in the fear of wild animals. If you want the tiger then release them into the cities, why do you want our land for that?
The urban environmentalists did not have a fair answer to respond and they decided to return. The question is simple: why do vulnerable sections of society have to sacrifice and lead the conservation movement, always?
In a wide space, the government of India added 8 African cheetahs to the Indian biosphere. Indian forests contain the hill regions which are not a natural habitat of the African cheetahs. In the first phase, cheetahs will possibly roam around the Indian forest in the search of grasslands, of which just 5% has remained in India. The cheetah is one of the widest ranging of big cats and is known to travel across areas of over 1,000 sq km in a year. The average area required for a single cheetah is 100 sq km. This means for 8 cheetahs around 700 sq km region is required. That is difficult to sustain in the Kuno National Park alone. The area of Kuno National Park is 748 sq. km. (Vanity Project, Scroll.in). The African cheetahs are aliens in the Indian ecosystem; they were imported, domesticated, and trained to hunt. Importantly, Indian forest department is not trained enough to tackle the cheetah effectively. Here, we can clearly say that they will hunt to survive in the new place which will surely increase the intensity of the Human-Wildlife conflict in India.
Conclusion
The impact of climate change is devastating to the marginalized sections. People do not have sufficient resources to cover their heads. The CO2 emission is highest in the urban areas; cities are built by deforestation and industrialization but the responsibility of forest conservation lies on the shoulders of rural communities. As we asked for compensation from the developed countries to deal with climate change, it also reflects urban and rural dimensions. Rural communities depend on agriculture for their livelihood but the destruction of the crops has impacted the largest number of farmers. 30 percent of the total population is affected by the conflict with wildlife.
The mitigation of the human-wildlife conflict is becoming more important. India needs a national-level human-wildlife conflict resolution policy, which should include the tiger/cheetah GPS-based warning system in the surrounding villages. What is needed is compensation for crops, livestock, and cattle lost, fencing for farms, allotment of CFR, ecosystem development funds for every village to reduce the dependency on the forest, fair compensation in the case of displacement, and the development of the coexistence of the human and wildlife. This will help to mitigate the human-wildlife conflict and establish peace around the forests.
This decision without proper research and planning to tackle the possible outcomes will be disastrous. Indian society is already suffering through climate change and the burden of carbon neutralization is on its shoulders. The government has to train and support the local people to deal with environmental issues such as droughts, heavy rails, landslides, diseases, decreasing productivity, and conservation of the forests and ecology. Events like releasing cheetah will not save the future of millions.
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References
- PM releases wild Cheetahs, Posted On: 17 SEP 2022 12:21 PM by PIB Delhi
- Johnson, M. F., Karanth, K. K., & Weinthal, E. (2018). Compensation as a Policy for Mitigating Human-wildlife Conflict Around Four Protected Areas in Rajasthan, India. Conservation and Society, 16(3), 305–319.
- Mukherjee, A. (2009). Conflict and Coexistence in a National Park. Economic and Political Weekly, 44(23), 52–59.
- Kothari, A., Saloni Suri, & Neena Singh. (1995). Conservation in India: A New Direction. Economic and Political Weekly, 30(43), 2755–2766.
- NIRAJ, S. K., KRAUSMAN, P. R., & DAYAL, V. (2012). A Stakeholder Perspective into Wildlife Policy in India. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 76(1), 10–18.
- Human-wildlife conflict, one of the greatest threats to wildlife species Posted on 08 July 2021 By Lilian Gikandi, World Wildlife Fund.
- Forest Survey of India (fsi.nic.in)
- Tiger Census report 2018
- Tigers and tribals: Conservation project displaced 18,493 families in 48 yrs by, Down to Earth, 9 Oct 2020.
- ‘Vanity project’: Introducing African cheetahs into India is a bad idea, experts say (scroll.in)
- National Wildlife Database, Wildlife Institute of India WII
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Sachin Kamal is a farmer, social and climate activist. He has done MA in Social Work (Community Organisation and Development Practice) TISS Mumbai. He is currently working with NITI Aayog in Aspirational District Program in Maharashtra.
