Hello and welcome to a special episode of We the People. It's been 50 years since India launched the ambitious project Tiger and Milestones called for introspection, an assessment of what we've achieved and where we have fallen short of what we set out to do and where we stand today. So tonight on we, the people, we are looking back and looking ahead. One way of assessing where we stand is by looking at the numbers. The tiger population in India now stands at 3167. That is what the latest Tiger Census, or the Tiger survey says. The data was released by Prime Minister Modi this morning to commemorate 50 years of Project Tiger. And while this is a tremendous achievement, what is the plan for the next 25 years? All numbers tell a story. What do we make of these numbers? How far have we come? Where are we headed today? Are we the people we put together for you? A panel of India's most credible conservationists, naturalists and wildlife experts who've been passionate about the cause of tiger conservation in India? But first we are thrilled to have aha but on. We the people tonight who has used his agency, raised his voice and thrown his weight behind this cause. First on we the people tonight. Aha! But on today's big numbers Yeah. No, no, this is on April the 1st 1973 India launched its very ambitious project Tiger to promote tiger conservation. Some years ago, N. D TV, passionate about this project and the cause of tiger preservation, asked me to join them to ambassador the Save the Tigers campaign. It was a moment of great pride for me to be a part of this most laudable effort and to have partaken in several public interest events, as also in a most memorable telephone which was conducted in the forests of a tiger reserve. Today, ladies and gentlemen, it can be proudly said that an agenda has been set for the nation from being close to the alarming condition of the extinction of the mighty cat. The latest census gives us a figure of more than 3000 tigers that roam our forests today, and those of you that may have watched the news there this afternoon may have noticed that the honourable Prime Minister Modi announced that figure to be almost 3167 tigers, up from a little over 2000 within a year or so. A five decade battle to save the tiger is on the path to success. But the road ahead is quite challenging. India today and this, you may want to know, is the world's greatest tiger stronghold, home to 70% of the tiger population of the entire world. In the next 50 years, we must as proud India's pledge to guard this treasure of us. This is what about Yeah, so the road ahead is paved with challenges. India is home to 70% of the world's tiger population and we must guard this treasure, says Amaan. But how exactly does one do that? Bittu, editor of Sanctuary Asia. Someone who has documented Project Tiger right from its inception through Sanctuary Asia. Thank you for joining us, Mr Segal. Prime Minister Modi said today as we announce these numbers that we as an India does not believe in conflict between the ecology and the economy, but we give importance to the coexistence between the two. In that context, Mr Seger put this figure 3167 into perspective for us, please. Well, uh, Sarah, The first perspective is that you can't really count every single tiger. It's a projection based on certain scientific facts that they collect and then they interpret. But let's put it like this. When Balmier and myself sat together three years before the year 2000, sometime around 1997 we thought that the Tigers may not even survive for the next three years. So to that extent, I would say that we have an absolutely unmitigated success on our hands in terms of preventing extinction. But we should be cautious before celebrating because while we count tigers incidentally, when Project Tiger was actually launched, it was said, Don't count the tigers. Find out when the water sources come back and you'll know that everything will come back as it is intended to the grasses come back, the deer come back, the tiger have food, has food, et cetera. So at this moment in time, the worry is you talked of the next 25 years. The worry is we've probably lost 60% of all the forests in which we might have found a tiger Pama The day that that that project Tiger was launched in 1973 get that figure clear. Possibly 60% of the area where the tiger used to roam in thin numbers or thick have vanished. Our real problem now is to bring the forests back in order to bring the Tigers back with some degree of security. So save the habitat and that would save the tiger. That should be a mantra. Just looking at numbers. Whether it's 3000, 2000, 5000 doesn't really help or give you the big picture. But how does one do that if you are a country of a billion people with development and goals and ambitions when we want eight lane highways and we want bullet trains, too? Dr. Rajesh Gopal, former member of the Indian Foreign Service, a Project Tiger member of secretary of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, General Secretary General of the Global Tiger Forum. So how does one do that? Me, uh, I'm somewhere outside the venue. Conference venue. Can you hear me? I hear you. Thank you so much. Uh, that's a very important question. Has raised my good old friend. So you need a landscape approach. You need to be centrifugal. You need to engage with all stakeholders who operate there in. So you can factor in the concerns of tiger and other cats, big or small, in their action portfolio where tiger is not the goal, then only you can save the habitat. That is precisely what was released today. The vision document on the Tigers you see for the next decade or so you need to. Your scale needs to be macro and sent. Your approach needs to be centrifugal. You need to see beyond the tiger source area so that you can engage with all these people so that they can, uh, safeguard those areas. Because these corridors pass through these land uses, you have a lot of land parcels, and the landscape is under transformation. No country is exception to that because you have several agendas. Several ownership, several land users and most of them not are not sustainable. Ecologically. That was it. Sarah. So, So the challenge is one of many challenges. Let's bring in who is a force of nature in the conservation world. A tiger conservation hero who has devoted his life to the understanding and protection of the endangered Tigers of Asia, whose book I'm actually completely consumed by right now. Mr. Karan, if you look back at the last 50 years, the largest gains really have been in the first few decades, right? And as Amita Bain says, while this is a huge achievement, it's not time to rest on one's laurels. What are the challenges in place for Project Tiger now going forward the next 25 years? See, the numbers, uh, are important, but as you say, it's a different world now, after 30 years of protection, see, initially, uh, the uh, protection was confined to a few reserves. Now, even now, the you know, strictest protection probably is only in about, uh, 30 40,000 square kilometres. The vast expanse of three lakh 80 versus this 40 or 50 still remains poorly protected. And if you look at the most extensive forests in India, go to any forest map. There are in Chattisgarh, Dark and Orissa in the northeastern hill states, and those are virtually bereft of tigers, for the most part because there the conditions haven't changed from 1970 so we should be investing there and bringing back tigers on a larger scale than pumping more and more money into the same set of reserves or a small set of reserves and some of them very poor, chosen and not deploying our resources wisely to really do what is achievable. That's the thing that bothers. All right, so interesting. Another aspect brought up here, Maybe expand the footprint Ash and Dr Anish and CEO of Wildlife Conservation Trust. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If I'm hearing what I heard from Dr Karan, we have then the best habitats for tigers in the world. But in those parts of India, we don't necessarily have reserves there. No, So no, no. The Western Guards is a big area. From Gujarat downwards to Kerala, there are a lot of protected areas, which means tiger reserves, tiger reserves, tiger densities are stable or have slightly or marginally gone up. But there are interlining corridors and corridors are extremely important for long term sustenance of tiger populations. So if the tiger population, uh uh has to be sustained over a long period of time, then there has to be immigration and immigration of tigers and prey in between these parks and through these corridors are where tiger densities have gone down, which may have an impact, uh, later on, because if you don't have any movement of tigers, then a local threat can easily wipe out a tiger population even in a good habitat. So wear does have the best habitats, but they are all inside. Tiger reserves with central India is not like that. Central India has tigers both inside and also in the country corridors. Some of the best tiger corridors in India are in central Indian landscape between bench and the Khanna tiger reserves, also to the south of Kahana, which is in Bala, which is also to the east of Taro. So central India, especially Mad Pradesh, Maharashtra, have done exceedingly well as far as tiger numbers go, but other states not so much. So I can. I also categorise those tiger reserves because India has 53 tiger and together we are looking at 75,700 square kilometres of a protected area, which means all of 53 tiger reserves when you add them, the area is about 75,700 square kilo. Of that, I would say there are about seven states which have done well, but let me just understand. Exactly. I just want to ask you that. So you're saying we have some 53 reserves in various states, maybe 18 states? How exactly would you categorise the performance of these states? Yes, So I would categorise them in in in three specific categories. The the best states, the intermediate states and, uh, poor states with poor track record. There are. So we have tigers in 53. Um, and these results are distributed amongst 18 states of this seven states. I would say Ma Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Assam and Tamila have done well. Uh, there the tiger population has gone up, uh, in the last 10 years, or it is stabilised. The intermediate states are actually counterintuitive. A lot of people think Rajasthan as one of the better tiger states, but actually it is because of Rumbo that Rajasthan has a good name when it comes to tigers. But beyond the Raam National Park, there is hardly any tiger population in in Rajasthan. You know that Tigers had got wiped out from Sarika has not yet bounced back like a panna actually has bounced back after extinction. But sarika remains where it is. So Rajasthan, Kerala and West Bengal, I would say, are intermediate. They need to improve. West Bengal lost all tigers from to those that is Baka. However, they have a stable tiger population in Sunderman. That's why I give them intermediary status, the the poor track record status. And you can imagine so we have nine states which are either top or intermediate. Nine states have poor track record, starting with Telangana, Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Shark, Khan, Riha, Bihar, Aruna Pradesh, Misra and Uttar Pradesh. So 50% of all Tiger states are actually, uh, having a very poor and it is not really changed in the last four years. So when you have Tiger numbers coming out year on year or after every four years, um, once we analyse why the numbers have gone up or down, the the amount of action that one needs to take at the state level is not actually going in so we can keep putting these numbers out. But those states which are poor are still poor, they have not improved. And I am sure that many more Tiger reserves are going to lose all tigers in the coming years, and we know the state of Forest report that the good quality forest is actually getting degraded into a poor quality. And so the forest cover may go up, but the quality habitats have actually gone down progressively over the last 10 years. And this is worrisome. And this can have huge impacts on tiger populations in the years to come. Wow. So that is a reality check. Perhaps that's what we needed to look at. So you're saying basically, we need a stronger of tigers, you know, with stronger DNA. It talks about in breeding. We need biodiversity. We need to make sure we have a healthy immune system again. It's not just down to the numbers. So Dr Gopal, please come in over here. It sounds like that. In a sense, yes, we have the numbers on the statistically. We show that we have more tiger. But that doesn't necessarily mean this is a healthy, thriving ecosystem that we may have too many eggs in one basket or in one sanctuary. Not at all. Sara, we have, uh, six or seven. Uh uh uh. I mean, landscapes, Tiger landscape. They are there sustainably. Now. We have issues with certain results that Anne was pointing out. Some areas are having long standing left wing extremism. Some areas there are inherent biological carrying capacity issues. They can't hold more tigers. So even even if you pack all these tiger reserves 53 of them to their biological carrying capacity mind you, then you can't aspire to have more than 1000 more tigers. So you you don't want to invest in Tiger agenda to make them best in this uh uh uh, human dominated landscape. They have the tender dynamics and when people say 10,000 tigers 20,000 tigers more, I don't agree with them because the landscape transformation is an ongoing phenomenon. And no country is an exception to this. Uh and and this is going to happen. It will keep happening. So you have to have populations which are sustainable. You have to have diffused porosity of tiger genes so that you can have the people the human wildlife conflict, human tiger conflict in check that what? That is what it is. That is what tiger science is all about. Thank you, Butters. So, yes. How does one arrive? And then what is the right number of tigers. I mean, all of this is such a complex and hats off to all of you who have spent your lives in the squares and fields. But how does one then arrive at what is the right number of tigers? Given the fact that also, you know, the owners of the responsibility of the global Tigers, protecting them seems to be like falling on India because we have 70% of the world's global tigers. I think it's a great credit to our people that we have those many tigers here because I think somewhere in our DNA there is a certain respect, a reverence, religion, all kinds of things at play. But, uh, one thing is very clear. I disagree with Rajesh Gopal. I think we can hold a lot more tigers, but in order to do that, we have to rethink why we are protecting tigers. It's not just a numbers game. Of course, we have to find out how many estimate how many tigers there are. But at this point in time Project Tiger was one of the world's first scalable rewilding projects. At that point, people were not planting trees inside. They left it to the what you might call the landscape engineers of the Wild, which is the butterflies, the birds, the bees, the monkeys, the deer. It was natural regeneration. We our job was to prevent artificial fires to prevent poaching and to prevent the encroachment of these areas from the outside in nature would do the rest. At this point, I would like to give our viewers right now a very, very clear single one line rationale. If we protect the Tigers and enhance their habitat, then what Ula Karan has been saying for a long time will come true. We can accommodate more tigers, but we will need to make sure that those areas are rewilding. Now we are not going to be able to rewind them with sanctuaries and national parks. But one of the infirmities of Project Tiger say, in 19 seventies early eighties was that the people living around the tiger reserves did not benefit from the restoration of biodiversity. Today we see in Maharashtra, steps have been taken. People are now asking for their areas to be declared as buffer areas because they are actually earning money because biodiversity is coming back. It's not just tourism when we enhance the physical area we turn, say me say, you know either either tatter tonne or partially working farms back into into really regenerated grasslands and and, uh, and and forest habitats What? The first thing that happens is we pull atmospheric carbon down. Project Tiger is one of the world's most effective climate control infrastructures. They supply water. There's huge economic benefits that come not just to gate money, the connection between biodiversity. You talked of the immune system. I'm saying that the biodiversity and the biosphere itself is the immune system of the planet. When we do that, I can assure you when when people begin to benefit from the tiger or this is a matter of policy, this is what a yo should be sitting down. This is what the Ministry of Environment and Forests should be sitting down to do. We will find ourselves giving the tiger more space, and in return, the tiger will give us sustenance, climate control, water supply, all those various things. Our economics are skewed. We don't have a minus button on the calculator there. We just look at these reserves as being negative to the to the economy In truth, this is long term economics at play and it will be greatly useful to this country to expand tiger habitats. It will. It will control climate. It will reduce floods. It will reduce drought and it will probably give anywhere. We would give several million jobs. So we were gaining green wealth. But we have, uh uh, doctor here. So Dr Karan, let me ask you this question. How many tigers do you think we can have? I asked this question to, uh because we have we've gone up in in the numbers of our reserve. I answer your question. Other people may have other opinions. We have three lakh, 80,000 square kilometres of forest where tigers can exist. In spite of the all the history, we still have three lack and even if you assume an average density of five tigers per 100 square kilometres, which is not difficult to achieve in these forests with reasonable protection, we have actually achieved 10 or more in many of the best reserves. But if we do that, we can still have 10,000 tigers. But we never had that aspirational goal. It was all about particularly after 2004. It became all about spending money, expanding area and doing things which were not needed. That Mission Drift has worried me. Mission drift has me all right. I do want to squeeze in wme th just to give us a big picture of who has had 48 years of work with tigers who's authored some over 40 books, mainly on tigers and wildlife. Wal, where do we go from here? How do we build on this painstaking, very complex achievement? Could you just give us five action points for the future? I look at it as a five point programme. These are my priorities. After 48 years of experience, the first and most important is training. We have to get state of the art training to all our forest staff who looks after the land of the tiger and the senior level middle management every year for one month. They should get an understanding of what the tiger needs. What are the problems that have increased, how they can refresh their strategies to get better results? So training is essential at field levels, but also in the National Tiger Authority. Anyone who joins the NTC must be trained in understanding the tiger and its needs. You can't just dispute forest officers to the National Tiger Conservation Authority. And if the National Tiger Conservation Authority starts looking after cheetahs, that should be a separate cell. You can't mix up tiger conservation and cheetah conservation, so the NTC needs senior level training for them to get a hands on approach to what tigers need in site specific situations. Secondly, I think we need joint management teams at the field level, which means we need to contract independent experts and supporting experts, wildlife scientists, rural developmental experts who work as a team with the field director. They are contracted for 5 to 10 years. Our younger generation needs to have the opportunity to take decisions, not to be listened to and do a yap yap yap in various committees but actually be in the field and get their hands is dirty, working with the field administration. So a new fresh approach to how the outside world mingles with the government to make decisions for the tiger. Thirdly, all our tiger reserves are ringed by Villagers. We need to find a more inclusive approach where we encourage village wildlife volunteers. These are the younger generation who live in villages who should be given some camera traps, a smart phone, and they provide very important information on the movement of wild animal on the edges. What's going out? What's happening? Any illegal happenings that are coming into the park, be it poachers or wood cutters? This army of conservation should not enter with villages that are all around. So one person from one village, about 50 to 100 people in every one of these 53 tiger reserves. It makes a new army of conservation, which I think is really, really important. Then we need a rewilding strategy, the buffer areas which are very degraded. Some are held privately. Some have degraded agricultural land. Some have revenue land. There should be a mapping of this area to see how much we can extend our tiger reserves. So the spillover of animals, the spillover of tigers and the spillover of wildlife is contained, and animals have more space to move around. This needs strategic planning. You need to work with Villagers. You need to work with the stakeholders. You need to work with different government departments. This, to me, is really vital if we are going to make and have a healthy base to our population. If you look at tourism differently, we need a new reformed policy. At the moment, about 18% of our tiger reserves is allowed for tourism. We need to rotate these areas regularly. That means every 23 years a new area is given for tourism. The allowed to LAX. We don't do enough of this, so we have tourism and it goes on in the same area year after year, year after year. But we need to change it. We need to be flexible. We need to understand what visitors want from a process. And when you combine all these things, you get a more inclusive way to managing wild tigers. At the moment, we don't do that. We are shrouded in secrecy. Nobody reveals what's happening. They do things on their own. And we should have a much more transparent approach towards tiger conservation. Right? And, uh, and and more conversations on on tiger con con conservation. Thank you all for joining us on. We the people where we have tried to take this beyond the figures beyond the numbers. Thank you. for joining us and we the people where we believe it's important to speak up, but also to listen. Thank you for being part of this conversation. Good night.
