The government has trapped Project Tiger, now 50, in a tough spot | Explained Premium

The Indian government’s violations of the Wildlife (Protection) Act and the Forest Rights Act have exacerbated conflicts in Tiger Reserves between the forest bureaucracy and forest-dwellers, ultimately endangering India’s tigers.

Launched in 1973, Project Tiger introduced India’s Tiger Reserves – which have since rapidly ascended in status. From an administrative category arbitrarily constituted and administered by the forest bureaucracy, Tiger Reserves became a statutory category in 2006. Today, Tiger Reserves are hailed worldwide as India’s miraculous success story in environment and forest conservation, especially in this age of climate change.

From only nine Reserves in 1973 encompassing 9,115 sq. km, there are 54 in 18 States, occupying 78,135.956 sq. km, or 2.38% of India’s total land area. Critical Tiger Habitats (CTH) cover 42,913.37 sq. km, or 26% of the area under National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries.

The first tiger census, in 1972, used the unreliable pug-mark method to count 1,827 tigers. As of 2022, the more reliable camera-trap method indicated there were 3,167-3,925. India’s tiger population is growing at 6.1% a year, prompting the government to claim India is now home to three-quarters of the world’s tigers.

In the same year – 1972 – India enacted the Wildlife (Protection) Act (WLPA). It introduced new spatial fixtures within notified forests, called ‘National Parks’, where the rights of forest-dwellers were removed and vested with the State government. It also created ‘Wildlife Sanctuaries’, where only some permitted rights could be exercised.

Project Tiger was the result of this development. Until then, it had been a Centrally Sponsored Scheme of the (then) Union Ministry of Environment and Forests. The government created the ‘Critical Tiger Habitat’ to vouchsafe a part of India’s forests for tiger-centric agendas. Beyond each CTH would be a Buffer Area: a mix of forest and non-forest land. But even though the latter had an inclusive, people-oriented agenda, the overall ‘fortress conservation’ approach to protecting tigers displaced people who had coexisted with tigers for generations, and became ground zero for generations of conflict.

In 2005, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appointed a five-member ‘Tiger Task Force’ in 2005. He was responding to a public outcry: that India’s tigers existed only on paper and not in the forests of Sariska in Rajasthan, where the government had spent Rs 2 crore per tiger in 2002-2003 for their upkeep and safety, versus Rs 24 lakh per tiger elsewhere.

The Task Force found the approach (then) of using guns, guards, and fences wasn’t protecting tigers, and that the increasing conflict between the forest/wildlife bureaucracy and those who coexist with the tigers was a recipe for disaster. The group asserted “the protection of the tiger is inseparable from the protection of the forests it roams in. But the protection of these forests is itself inseparable from the fortunes of the people who, in India, inhabit forest areas.”