Chilla: Tigers bounce back!

The bounce back of tigers in Chilla - which will hopefully be sustained - nails the lie that the Gujjars were conservationists who were good for the forest ecosystem.

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Samir Sinha, former director of Rajaji National Park and now Director, Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve; former Chief Wildlife Warden A. S. Negi; and Uttaranchal forest minister Nav Prabhat are all to be congratulated on persisting in the face of tremendous odds in making the Gujjar relocation programme work.

These are pictures of the second relocation site at Gaindikhata, courtesy Samir Sinha. No one can argue that the Gujjars are worse off here than they were inside the forest!

With the debacle in Rajasthan, Uttaranchal is now the last redoubt of the tiger in northern India. We have to keep it that way. The important thing is that the forests of the so-called Terai Arc, while no doubt fragmented to an extent where many ''corridors'' for elephants are either lost or sub-optimal, still offer some hope for tigers. The Chilla experience shows this.

Yet these forests are also close to the smuggling route through Nepal.

We need to be watchful about poaching and trafficking, as well as 'development' efforts (most notably medium and large infrastructure works) that may further fragment these forests.

- Nirmal Ghosh

(Excerpted from a report by Prerna Singh Bindra/ New Delhi, April 2005)

Amidst the horror stories of the disappearing tigers from Sariska and Ranthambhore, there is finally some good news. After a gap of two decades, the tiger is back in the Chilla range of the Rajaji National Park in Uttaranchal. Camera traps set up by researchers from the Wildlife Institute of India show the presence of two breeding tigresses.

Dr AJT Johnsingh of the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun says that the last authentic report of a cub in this area was twenty-years ago. "I have been in this institute for about twenty years. When I joined, I was shown the tracings of tiger cub pugmarks, after that it is only now that tigers are back, and breeding. It is a remarkable success story," he enthuses. The last census conducted in Rajaji two years ago shows 30 tigers in the 820 km park, of which Chilla occupies 200 sq km. The census is open to question, the numbers highly doubtful, for tigers have always been a rare sight in the park.

The recovery of Rajaji is nothing short of a miracle. The park suffers from intense biotic pressure in the form of tree lopping, cattle grazing, grass cutting and to some extent poaching.

Pastoral Gujjar families, though traditionally nomadic, have settled in Rajaji over the years with their livestock, exerting this pressure. Till 2003, Chilla was virtually a sanctuary for the Van Gujjars, and their cattle, and had been degraded almost beyond redemption. Grasses were trampled, the nullah running through Chilla had been reduced to a toxic trickle. The most damaging was the livestock, cattle had reduced and trampled the grasslands. With such intense disturbance, wildlife had disappeared. "We knew for the fact that tigers were not breeding," confirms Samir Sinha, the former Director of the park. A major and difficult decision to rehabilitate the Gujjar families finally started in 2002, and by February of the next year, 193 Gujjar families from Chilla were resettled in Gaindikhatta.

To learn how the forest would regenerate after the removal of human and livestock pressure, a study was initiated to scientifically monitor vegetation, ungulates and tiger recovery. Chilla range was divided into three parts and twelve camera traps were rotated within these so that the entire area was covered within a thirty-day cycle.

The findings are heartening, grasslands grew back, the prey base returned, and predators followed the prey. Tigers are back in Chilla. The fresh influx of tigers has sent a strong message. Leave nature alone, and she will rejuvenate. That, and protection is all that tigers need to flourish. That tigers are breeding, it sends the strongest signal of a healthy eco-system. For a tigress chooses her nursery only where there is plenty of prey closeby.

Chilla is on the east bank of the River Ganga and is almost contiguous to the Corbett Tiger Reserve. Experts believe that it is possibly that the tigers migrated from the buffer zones of Corbett to Chilla after the Gujjars were relocated.

No tigers in Dudhwa Tiger Reserve? It has not quite come to that, but there is little doubt that the big cats are on the decline in this reserve, too. There have been no tiger sightings in Katarnia Wildlife Sanctuary, part of the reserve, for over an year. In February 2005, one tiger skin and 20 kg bones were seized. The last census enumerating 104 tigers, which has been rubbished as a wild exaggeration. A high level team, led by Dr Rajesh Gopal, director, Project Tiger, is rushing to the reserve to investigate.

However, there is a lot that needs to be done before we pat ourselves on the back. Chilla constitutes just a one fourth of the park, which is still under intense biotic pressures from the remaining 700-odd Gujjar families and their livestock. Also, Chilla is a small island hemmed in by human population, agriculture and development projects. "For Rajaji to flourish, it is vital that we remove the obstacles from the Chilla-Motichur corridor," advises Johnsingh. Easier said than done. An army ammunition dump borders the park and Khandgaon III, a village where Tehri oustees have been settled will have to be relocated.