‘Development projects should not jeopardise tigers’

If India has to ensure the long-term survival of its national animal, it may have to think beyond protected tiger reserves, according to a team of scientists who carried out genetic studies to understand long-term survivability of tigers in the country.

The scientists, led by Uma Ramakrishnan, geneticist, at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, also carried out simulation studies to ascertain how development projects and future land-use changes will impact the persistence and survival of the big cats. Providing functional connectivity between adjoining tiger reserves, notifying a buffer zone around small protected areas and factoring in tiger conservation when developmental projects are planned and undertaken in and around the forests, would go a long way in protecting tigers, the scientists reported in a research paper.

“We are not against development projects. All we are saying is that when new highways are built and new mining sites are explored, they should be planned and executed in such a manner that their impact is minimal on tiger,” said the study, which recently appeared in the journal Biological Conservation. The scientists chose the central India Landscape, where 11 Protected Areas, including Kanha, Bandavgarh and Pench, are located.

India is home to 65 per cent of the world’s wild tigers and it has a central role to play in conserving the big cat. India is also a party to the St Petersburg declaration of 2010, which propounded doubling tiger numbers across the nations.

“In the business as usual scenario, genetic variability of tiger will reduce by around 25 per cent and their numbers will go down, mostly because of extinction of small population,” said Prachi Thatte, the first author of the paper and a doctoral student of Ramakrishnan. The study showed that high traffic roads and urban areas are detrimental to tiger movement.

Incidentally, around two dozens tigers have had unnatural death in the last one year in the country, with the latest one being that of a male tiger which was killed last week while crossing the National Highway-6 on a stretch not very far from Nagpur.

Doubling of tiger numbers can only be sustained in the future if the corridors notified by the National Tiger Conservation Authority are protected and stepping-stone populations are maintained, she said.

“PAs with stepping stone corridors can be imagined as a necklace with large and small beads. Large beads are the large PAs. They are connected to each other by the string (forested corridor) and with small beads (small PAs and stepping stone populations) between them,” said Thatte.

Currently, there are breeding tiger populations outside protected areas (for example, in Balaghat and Seoni districts of MP and Bhandara and Chandrapur districts of Maharashtra).

Protecting such areas and ensuring that the corridors pass through them will create a network of interconnected PAs. This will help in ensuring the survival of tigers, especially in areas that are not large enough, she explained.