As tigers thrive, India's indigenous demand rights

BENGALURU, India — It was a celebratory atmosphere for officials gathered just hours away from several of India's major tiger reserves in the southern city of Mysuru, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Sunday to much applause that the country's tiger population has steadily grown to over 3,000 since its flagship conservation program began 50 years ago after concerns that numbers of the big cats were dwindling.

"India is a country where protecting nature is part of our culture," Modi said. "This is why we have many unique achievements in wildlife conservation."

Modi also launched the International Big Cats Alliance which, he said, will focus on the protection and conservation of seven big cat species, namely, the tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, puma, jaguar and cheetah.

Protesters, meanwhile, are telling their own stories on Sunday of how they have been displaced by wildlife conservation projects over the last half-century, with dozens demonstrating about an hour away from the spot of the announcement.

Project Tiger began in 1973 after a census of the big cats found India's tigers were fast going extinct through habitat loss, unregulated sport hunting, increased poaching and retaliatory killing by people. It's believed the tiger population was around 1,800 at the time, but experts widely consider that an overestimate was due to imprecise counting methods in India until 2006.

Laws attempted to address the decline, but the conservation model centered around creating protected reserves where ecosystems can function undisturbed by people.

Several indigenous groups say the conservation strategies meant uprooting numerous communities that had lived in the forests for millenniums.

Members of several indigenous or Adivasi groups — as indigenous people are known in the country — set up the Nagarahole Adivasi Forest Rights Establishment Committee to protest evictions from their ancestral lands and seek a voice in how the forests are managed.

"Nagarahole was one of the first forests to be brought under Project Tiger and our parents and grandparents were probably among the first to be forced out of the forests in the name of conservation," said J.A.Shivu, 27, who belongs to the Jenu Kuruba tribe.

The fewer than 40,000 Jenu Kuruba people are one of the 75 tribal groups that the Indian government classifies as particularly vulnerable. Adivasi communities like the Jenu Kurubas are among the poorest in India.

Some experts say conservation policies that attempted to protect a pristine wilderness were influenced by prejudices against local communities.

India's tiger numbers, meanwhile, are thriving: the country's 3,167 tigers account for more than 75 percent of the world's wild tiger population.

But critics say the social costs of forest conservation — where forest departments protect wildlife and prevent local communities from entering forest regions — are high.

Sharachchandra Lele, of the Bengaluru-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, said the conservation model is outdated.

"There are already several examples of forests being used actively by local communities and tiger numbers have actually increased even while people have benefited in these regions," he said.

Vidya Athreya, the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society in India, said: "Traditionally we always put wildlife over people." Athreya added that engaging with communities is the way forward for protecting wildlife in India.

Agencies via Xinhua