Be selfish to save the king of the jungle
Protecting tigers means protecting our forests and protecting forests means ensuring country's own ever-increasing water needs as most of the rivers originate from our verdant forests. It is a simple ageold equation but appears difficult to understand for a modern nation which is chasing material gains and has limited ability to see things beyond a few years! As a result, tiger remains under grave threat in India and the sub-continent, so are our biodiversity-rich forests and, naturally the ancient river systems. Some of the rivers have just perished like that of Saraswati. This could happen to Yamuna also.
Tiger conservation efforts started growing steadily as its number began dwindling fast after India gained her independence. The bleak future of tiger made wildlife lovers anxious and with a nature lover Prime Minister in power, they approached Indira Gandhi who responded beyond expectations. This gave birth to Project Tiger in April 1973 with much fanfare and an initial investment of Rs four crore by the government of India, making it world's largest programme for wildlife protection then.
Upon 10 years of the project completion, Indira Gandhi was still worried as the local communities were hostile towards conservation efforts of the government. This led her to form the first Tiger Task Force in 1982 under Madhavrao Scindia's chairmanship.
But the growing human population, pressures on natural resources and poaching continued to add to the national animal's woes in the next few years. When tiger scientists and experts started getting reports of massive poaching and doubts were raised about fudging of census figures by forests officials to save themselves, the cameratrap method was introduced by Wildlife Institute of India (WII) to count each individual tiger in the wild. The introduction of new technology showed just 1411 individual tigers in the country, creating an international uproar. This was the time the jungle ka raja was completely decimated from Sariska in Rajasthan and Panna in Madhya Pradesh. Tigers conservationists and lovers were never prepared for such a rude shock. Clearly, government efforts were falling much shorter than required to save tiger. Another task force was formed under well known environmentalist Sunita Narain. From its various recommendations came out the NTCA, now responsible for tiger's overall well being.
Today, with the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) guiding the state forest departments with the use of technology, enhanced budgetary allocations, besides new landscape management theories, hopes for tiger are still alive. India is home to more than half of world's tiger population. It's also the only hope where the beautiful animal would survive. The last census showed us 2226 number of tigers in the PAs and it was 'celebrated' in the country because of the reliability of the number which reflected success of conservation practices.