Vanishing tigers are a biodiversity crisis

by Kamaljit S. Bawa
(from The Times of India, May 19, 2005)

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Government officials and politicians have suddenly woken up to missing tigers in our wildlife sanctuaries, tiger reserves and national parks. Manmohan Singh, after Indira Gandhi, might well be the first prime minister to take a strong interest in our wild heritage. Tigers, being on top of the food chain, symbolise the entire gamut of wildlife, but by talking about missing tigers we are actually missing the whole point about the tragic plight of the wilderness in our country.

Trade in tiger products may well be a key factor in the disappearance of tigers. However, the slide in tiger population began with the loss and degradation of its surviving habitat, and that continues to this day. Development activities in the form of new roads, hydroelectric dams and mining have destroyed many habitats. Human pressures have reduced large contiguous pieces of forests to small, isolated patches that are too small to hold viable populations of large animals such as tigers, elephants and other wide-ranging species. Missing tigers are just the tip of an iceberg of environmental follies.

If these follies were not enough, we have alienated local communities by not addressing their basic livelihood needs. We have denied or restricted their access to their ancestral lands. In the process we have converted potential allies into adversaries in our battle to save nature.

Our onslaught on nature affects not just tigers but all wildlife. Our forests, including wildlife sanctuaries and national parks, are so degraded that they have completely lost many species of wild animals. True, we have some forests left, but most of these forests are what biologists call empty forests. These empty forests are degraded by exotic weeds from other continents such as lantana camara that spread in the openings created by human disturbance.

Such species compete for space and other resources with native species and threaten the successful regeneration of trees and other plants. Grazing and extraction of produce from forests is rampant. We are left with empty forests and dysfunctional ecosystems.

Apart from human pressures, other threats loom large. Climate change - changing temperature and rainfall patterns - is likely to add to the existing pressure on natural habitats. While current habitats turn inhospitable for a range of species and ecological communities, they may not have other places to shift, with humans using most of the remaining habitats.

India is home to two of the 33 global biodiversity hot spots - the Western Ghats and the Himalayas. These hot spots contain thousands of plants and animals found nowhere else on the planet. Wild species provide us a range of products for our daily use. Forests serve us by providing clean water at a sustained rate, releasing nutrients for soils and removing harmful chemicals from the air.

Wild bees pollinate our crops. Other insects act as predators of agricultural pests. Economists have estimated that the value of such services on an annual basis often exceeds the gross domestic product of the country. By destroying nature, we are not only taking the path to bankruptcy but also robbing future generations of assets that we inherited from our ancestors for passing on to our descendants.

Missing tigers symbolise a much larger problem - our failure to protect the entire gamut of life, including ourselves, from our own actions. Our political leaders have made matters worse by believing that nature can be protected by deploying guards and other forces in wildlife sanctuaries and national parks, as though curtailment of poaching will cure our ills.

The approach displays an utter lack of understanding of the problem and its underlying causes. The whole notion that only tigers and elephants, and not the entire complement of wild species and the ecosystems in which they occur, are threatened is an affront to human intelligence. The idea that our para-military forces can bring back the tigers and elephants indicates the inability of the proponents to understand the complex web of forces driving the wilderness to extinction.

Our wildlife problems cannot be resolved without fundamental changes in our attitudes towards nature and an appreciation of the immense ethical, spiritual, environmental and economic value of wilderness. We would need a strong political will to resist pressures to exchange short-term developmental goals for the long-term environmental benefits of nature.

Basic reforms in policies and governance would be required to develop new paradigms of conservation that involve local communities in conservation and protection of nature. Modern science and alternative knowledge systems should be tapped to manage, protect and replenish nature.

We cannot afford to fail. What is at stake is not only the survival of nature, but also of ourselves.

The writer is professor of biology, University of Massachusetts.