Why India’s rising tiger population poses a threat to local communities

Amidst a fast-changing world, the relationship between humans, animals and nature is evolving

On the morning of 18th July this year, Rushi Kishan Devtale (60), a resident of Bamangaon in Maharashtra went about his daily chores, taking the livestock out to graze. Later that day, he was mauled by a tiger that apparently attacked him out of instinct, during a hunt. This unfortunate encounter adds to the increasing number of human deaths due to tiger attacks in Chandrapur district in Maharashtra in the recent past. 

An adult tiger claims approximately 20-40 square kilometres of area as territory. With 97 tigers (according to the 2022 census) pervading for territory over 622.87 square kilometres, the spillover effect is causing increased interfacing between animals and humans living in proximity to the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR). Similar incidents are being reported from Lakhimpur and Pilibhit districts in Uttar Pradesh where tigers often take refuge in sugarcane fields, outside the forest. A total of nine deaths have been reported from adjoining areas of the Pilibhit and Dudhwa Tiger Reserves since 31st March this year, according to officials. With increasing density of the population of tigers in optimally utilised protected forests, erratic movements and sudden encounters are on the rise. The silver lining? None of the tigers are interested in eating their human prey. 

A streak of conservation efforts 

“Old and injured tigers often prefer living in peripheral forests and are too weak to kill prey. When they prey on cattle, it automatically increases the chance of human interaction due to the proximity,” shares Gautam Pandey, conservationist and wildlife filmmaker. “Forested areas have become fragmented and that has created areas where parts overlap, and there may be wild animal encounters with humans,” he adds.

On International Tiger Day, observed on 29th July, India got 3167 reasons to cheer for the orange-and-black fur that enthralls millions of people every year across tiger reserves in the country. Project Tiger, which started as an ambitious effort to protect the 268 majestic carnivores in 1973, has completed 50 years. The Status of Tigers 2022 report by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) released on the occasion reveals that while conservation has led to a rise in the number of tigers in just four states, other habitats have seen a decline. Of the 3167 tigers in the wild, 444 reside in Maharashtra, where, interestingly, the price of conservation is higher than in other states. The downsides are learnings for policymakers and conservationists to pitch for relevant adjustments to continue aiding the streak of conservation.

Questions of compensation

 “Conservation is not rocket science. It's not an unreasonable goal. What we need is long-term vision to make it happen,”  said Dr. K. Ullas Karanth, Emeritus Director, Center for Wildlife Studies, at the NatureInFocus Awards 2023 in his address. The rising numbers of tigers within a few protected areas lead to movement and dispersal of the animal into multi-use landscapes to reach habitable forests for occupation through corridors. Karanth writes “Very rarely, tigers may maul or kill humans they unexpectedly encounter, and the tiger may sometimes eat a part of the corpse. However, such encounters do not lead to persistent attacks on humans—many incidents may require no further management intervention than compensating the victim’s relatives.”

There is no compensation for incidents that happen due to trespassing into protected forests with malicious or suspicious intent, or outside the provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.  “While most other states compensate the next of kin with sub-10 lakh amounts, Maharashtra pays a sum of rupees 20 lakhs, upon determination of the true cause and the location of attack,” informs Anish Andheria, CEO of Wildlife Conservation Trust, a Mumbai-based non-government organisation. While no amount of money can compensate for the loss of life, especially the bread-earner or a working member of an impoverished household, as is with most such cases, faster disbursal of these grants helps in mitigating anger and curb retaliation. The state departments undertake massive campaigns to make people aware and alert about living in the vicinity of protected forests, especially in these corridor areas.

In just over a decade, Tadoba tells the story of successful models of managed conservation where the Forest Department plays a proactive role in building awareness and implementing measures to provide free-ranging habitats to the ever increasing population of big cats. The park has a whopping 17 gates in the buffer zones, in addition to the six gates to access core areas. It allows for tourism to aid conservation efforts with regular photographing and tracking of the whereabouts of the big cats. Patrolling teams stay within camps to monitor unauthorised activity in the forest region. In Uttar Pradesh too, fencing work around 90 kilometres of forest buffer is in progress. However, tragedies do occur. In a shocking incident in 2021, a woman forest guard was mauled to death by tigress T-12 (Maya) in the core zone during an estimation exercise. While this is a rare occurrence in the protected core, the overall deaths in wild animal attacks around the reserve stood at 53 in 2022.

Human-animal encounters

“Prosperity has increased sporadically around the wilderness, due to both tourism and improved socio-economic conditions. But it has also left pockets of people more vulnerable to wild animal encounters, mostly those dependent on farming, grazing or firewood collection in remote areas,” says Pandey. 

Somnath Kakade, (name changed on request) from Saoner tehsil has worked as a guard in the Pench Tiger Reserve with the Forest Development Corporation of Maharashtra (FDCM) for over 35 years. “Sometimes, a tiger would take cattle from a nearby village but there have been no deaths in the past few years in my range. I love the forest and the animals in it so despite the danger involved, I won’t give up my job,” says Kakade. “We nabbed one logger recently who gave the names of his associates upon questioning. However, poaching has reduced significantly with villagers being more aware of the value that the animals bring to our lives,” explains Kakade.

With extensive experience of tracking and filming tigers on the move, Pandey says, “Wild animals often follow historical migratory routes for movement. Among tigers, moving away in search of territory is a pertinent behaviour. Development of human habitations within these corridors have added to the problem, along with snares, poaching and roadkills.” 

Only some manage to move away unseen.

Survival of the fittest

India is staring at rising concerns about the true impact of, and standing committed to finding the way forward for Project Tiger. The Wildlife Conservation Trust has acted on hundreds of projects with state forest departments and other government agencies since 2009. The not-for-profit think-tank provides advisory to various stakeholders in mitigating wildlife-related conflict and empower communities to facilitate the conservation of natural ecosystems, including the All India Tiger Estimation Survey on behalf of the Government of India every four  years. 

“Conservation and policy go together. We need to speak the truth fearlessly in aiding the government do its job effectively. From aid to awareness-building  to deploying technology, conservation extends itself to a composite infrastructure and understanding of vulnerable areas for intervention,” says Andheria. “Even as the populations of Panthera tigris declined in most of the world’s 13 tiger range countries, India managed to set aside relatively large forested lands to protect the striped predators,” he adds. 

In his latest book Among Tigers: Fighting to Bring Back Asia’s Big Cats, Karanth addresses many relevant questions about conserving the big cat from his years of research. He believes that India still has 380,000 square kilometres of potential tiger habitat with a carrying capacity of 10,000 tigers and can be achieved through a science-based plan of action. This claim is being debated by experts, with a lens on effective conservation and conflict resolution.

Understanding human-wildlife interactions

According to veterinarian Dr. Prashant Deshmukh, “Large carnivores, when in proximity of human-dominated landscapes, attract considerable attention because of the perceived threat to human life. This often leads to removal of animals by the forest department or persecution of animals by local communities.”

Karanth, in his books, has described the difficulties in identifying the exact tiger in a conflict case, along with problems with relocation and transfer of these big cats who are territorial by instinct. 

To reduce the collection of wood as a source of fuel from fringe forests, the government offered subsidised LPG cylinders to the villagers in Bramhapuri Forest Division near Tadoba, adjacent to the newly established Ghorazadi Wildlife Sanctuary that is home to 55 tigers. “Many of them used it only to cook sparingly while continuing to use firewood to heat water for bathing,” shares Andheria. To induce behavioural change at scale in Bramhapuri, east of TATR, which has a very high incidence of human deaths because of the tigers, WCT introduced the ‘Heater of Hope’ project, offering a black cylindrical device that uses one-third of firewood as compared to traditional stoves. “We ran a pilot at scale with 5800 families spread across over 40 villages and this reduced visitations to the forest by 30 per cent in Bramhapuri. We offer a 75 per cent subsidy on the cost. Villagers have paid rupees 1,850 per water heater as they found it beneficial to use as well as to ensure the safety of the women,” says Andheria.

Strict management may ensure the protection of wild animals, but without the remarkable tolerance of the locals, conservation of the big cats in India would have been a distant dream. “I often feel that more than awareness, the villagers perhaps could be helped with survival training,” Pandey wishes. Till then, names like Rushi’s will be added alongside Purushottam Bopche, Ayodhya Prasad, Mamta Bodalkar, Harmesh Singh, Akash Diwakar, Swati Dhumane, Mandabai Sidam, Nilkant Nannaware and many more as the true heroes of Project Tiger.

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