The countdown has begun

A lot of enactments for the protection of the tiger are in place, but they need to be properly enforced

BK Sharma Delhi

The year 2005 was particularly critical for the survival of tigers. An enquiry confirmed the worst fears that the entire tiger population of Sariska was annihilated inter alia by organised poaching. Investigations by Rajasthan police revealed the existence of a gang of poachers that killed 21 tigers in Ranthambhore during last two years. Seizure of skins and other body parts outside Panna, Periyar and the Sunderbans showed that the network extended to protected areas in different parts of the country.

2005 also saw many developments that commit to protecting the tiger. A Tiger Task Force was created that gave comprehensive recommendations; infamous wildlife smuggler Sansar Chand was arrested and for the first time in the history of wildlife enforcement, the Control of Organised Crimes Act was invoked; Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself made an assessment of the on-ground protection regime in Ranthambhore; the union cabinet gave its approval for the establishment of the National Tiger Conservation Authority while the setting up of the National Wildlife Crime Control Bureau is in the ultimate stage of sanction.

"At one time in parts of India at the beginning of the last century, they (tigers) were so numerous that it seemed to be a question whether man or tiger would survive" wrote Dunbar Brander in 1923 (Wild Animals of Central India), reflecting on the tiger population in early 1800s. E P Gee in Wildlife in India estimates that there were perhaps 40, 000 tigers at the turn of the 20th century. The single most important factor for the cataclysmic decline in numbers thereafter was hunting. Tiger hunting already had a long history among the ruling elite of India, dating back to the Mughals. Emperor Jahangir killed over 17000 animals in the first 12 years of his reign, which included 86 tigers. For the British army and civilian officials, and also Indian rulers, it was an exciting pastime. Ramanuj Saran Singh Deo, ruler of Sarguja, claimed to have killed 1,159 tigers while George Yule of the Civil Service killed 400 and Montague Gerard hunted 207 tigers. RG Burton estimates in his The Book of the Tiger-1933 that a total of 1,579 tigers were shot in British India in the year 1877 alone, while former forest officer MD Chaturvedi calculates that an average of 280 tigers were shot annually from 1934 to 1954 in all the seven major tiger states. In a period of 50 years between 1875 and 1925, over 80,000 tigers and more than 150, 000 leopards were killed.  While hunting for trophy, reward or humanistic cause continued, post-Independence India witnessed systematic destruction of tiger habitats arising out of an exploding population, exploitation of forest resources, decimation of prey base and increasing livestock. The death-knell was sounded by Kailash Sankhala in 1969 when he presented the tiger estimates as less than 2,000 to the Tenth General Assembly of World Conservation Union (IUCN) at New Delhi. Soon, the tiger was included in the list of endangered species, India placed a complete ban on tiger shooting and enacted the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. Project Tiger was launched in April 1973, creating a network of nine reserves comprising core zones that are free from all human activity and buffer zones in which land use compatible with conservation needs were permitted. The number of reserves has now gone up to 28, so do the tiger numbers - from 2000 to somewhere close to 3800 - notwithstanding the controversy attached to the reliability of the pug mark census.