The Tale Of The Tiger Never Told

Poachers make more than a killing. But tiger protectors on the ground battle impossible odds for less than a pittance. AJIT SAHI walks the trail with the jungle patrol.

LET’S START with the money. You could be a poacher, kill a tiger and sell it in black. Bingo! It brings you Rs 30 lakh overnight. Or you could be a forest guard and risk your life day and night to save the tiger from being poached. You could do that 30 years and still not make nine thousand a month. If you don’t laugh off this crazy math it is likely to stab at your brain during the endless silent marches in the brooding woods. “In all these years, I have seen countless tigers, elephants, leopards, deer, boars, monkeys, vultures, birds, snakes,” smiles Nandan Singh Bisht, 46, a forest guard since 1981 in the lower Himalayan jungles of Uttarakhand. “But somehow, I haven’t ever seen a promotion.”

In a region too remote for cell phones, the internet, landlines or even newspapers, there is little cheer among Bisht’s brethren that India’s finance minister has given Rs 50 crore to bolster tiger protection across India’s 27 tiger reserves. Or, that the grandly named National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA)— set up in 2006 by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — will spend a massive Rs 600 crore, a four-fold increase, in the next five years, much of it on clearing the forests of the human habitation eroding the tiger’s habitat. As an “apex predator”, the tiger heads nature’s food chain and holds the key to preserving the air, water and forests of our imperilled planet. By eating about 60-80 animals a year, a tiger keeps a check on the population of herbivores, who would otherwise denude the jungle of its every seed and root.

By a back-of-the palm calculation, a tiger dead without replacement will lead to 20 acres of barrenness a year. But the government has failed to grasp a key paradigm of its crusade: you cannot safeguard the tiger unless you secure its protector. Tasked with the immense burden of tiger protection, the jungle patrol is understaffed, underpaid and woefully underequipped — especially to take on poachers. For Dinesh Chand Kandpal, Nandan Bisht’s superior, the dangers in tiger protection hit hard eight years ago — the day he landed at the gates of the sprawling jungles of the Corbett Tiger Reserve to accept the first promotion, as forest ranger, of his then 29-year-old career.

“I do not think it is possible to appreciate courage,” wrote the legendary hunter-turned-passionate conservator, Jim Corbett, recapping one of his innumerable chases of man-eating tigers, “until the danger that brought it into being has been experienced.” Corbett, whose name is given to Asia’s oldest wildlife park where Kandpal and Bisht work, often had the slickest gun when facing his fierce man-eating adversaries early last century. Kandpal had not even a rifle that day when facing a more menacing enemy: the poacher. “A guard came running to me and shouted that five people with guns were just ahead of us,” Kandpal says, recalling how the nightmare began. As a desperately under-equipped forest patrol challenged them, the intruders began firing. A deputy ranger fell immediately, to die the next day of gunshot wounds. The poachers took a forest guard hostage, attacked a chowki and robbed its belongings (including the guards’ .315 rifles), and vanished. The wireless sets they stole were found abandoned a year later.

IN FEBRUARY this year, the NTCA released the most comprehensive ever report on the tiger, called the ‘Status of tigers, co-predators and prey in India 2008’. The seminal study— the largest ever animal census in world history— outlines the many threats the tiger now faces. “The tiger has lost much ground due to direct poaching, loss of quality habitat and loss of its prey,” it notes. “In the past 50 years, humans have changed these ecosystems largely to meet growing demand for food, fresh water, timber, fibre and fuel, more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history.” India had an estimated one lakh tigers a century ago. But the numbers shrank terribly due to poaching. In 1973, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi launched Project Tiger as conservationists began expressing concern over the threat of extinction to the tiger. Some 35 years later, a great deal of hoopla still surrounds this threat, given the increasing demand for the tiger’s skins, bones for oriental medicines, and pelts.

According to the Wildlife Protection Society of India, over 175 tigers have been poached in just the last five years. Ranger Kandpal administers one of the Corbett’s 11 ranges — each a deep forest area about 100 sq km. He lives a bachelor’s life in a two-room quarters there with the barest facilities. Limited electricity came two years ago with solar panels. His routine involves endless forays into the thick forest in his rundown jeep, looking out for, apart from poaching and illegal tree-felling, wounded animals and forest fires. Deep patrolling requires going on elephant back, deeper still on foot. Recently, Kandpal has been given a GPS (satellite-guided positioning device), but it is erratic. Humble, as only the daunting forests can make all of us, Kandpal is a pleasant host for king and commoner alike, for a crucial part of his mandate is promoting tourism.

Last week, he made a vacation memorable for Priyanka Gandhi’s family and friends, taking them on a successful tiger-spotting ride. A few months ago, the prime minister’s holidaying daughter had similar occasion to thank him. Kandpal and his 10 fellow rangers are the backbone of the Corbett Tiger Reserve, nearly as large in area as the state of Delhi. But, after 37 years of working, Kandpal earns a monthly salary of just Rs 14,000. The bulk of it is spent on his son’s engineering and daughter’s dentistry studies. Kandpal won’t see another promotion during the remainder of his career. “It hurts a bit,” he says gently.

LIFE GETS only harsher for the lowest level in the department’s hierarchy: the forest guards. They too are forced into a bachelor existence all their married lives, barring brief escapes to their homes that last three or four days, once every three or four months. At the range sub-office set deep in the forest, Bisht and other guards live in barracks, the younger ones sharing rooms about 12ft x14ft with beds, a kitchen “without slabs”, and a washroom. Every evening, the forest guards jointly cook their meals at a makeshift mess to save money. “It is not so good to cook your own food,” he says. Bisht has been given two sets of pants and shirts as a uniform; plus a cap, a belt, two pairs of shoes, a pair of gumboots for the monsoons, a sweater and a grey coat for winter. He carries the antiquated .315 rifle on his patrols and shares with his companions the walkie-talkie given him five years ago.

Yet, Bisht has marched the jungles for 27 years, often with just a baton. Twice a month, his patrol marches six days on the trot, stopping for the night in forest stakeouts. The GPS and the wireless are good companions, but Bisht relies on an age-old technique: “We etch our route marks on the stones... The animals recognise us and stop when we whistle.” Bisht has lost count of the times he faced a herd of aggressive elephants and yet, walking away softly, stayed unharmed. He has dug up poachers’ nets and traps hidden in the scrubland. Often, he has given chase to animal stalkers.

A year ago, Bisht and several thousand other forest guards marched 4,60,000 km across Indian jungles — a distance more than 10 times the earth’s circumference — to count India’s tigers for the NTCA census. Traditionally, such census counted tiger pugmarks, unique to every beast, to estimate their population. But this time, the forest guards were trained in operating the high-tech self-starting “camera traps” that took pictures of roaming tigers at intervals. The census found an alarming drop in the number of tigers: from over 3,600 five years ago to just 1,411. It named Corbett as the best managed reserve, boasting the highest density of tigers in India — though still only 164 in an area of about 1,300 sq km.

Having worn the forest on his skin all his adult life, Bisht had taken easily to the census work. Then 10 months ago, he was also assigned file work at Dhikala, a Corbett sub-office with a clutch of tourist rooms overlooking the valley of the tranquil Ramganga River, the lifeline of its animals. The forest guards also run the rest houses for tourists, about 1,40,000 of whom crisscrossed Corbett last year. When the monsoon destroys the reserve’s maze of hill roads, the forest guards and the temporary staff mount repairs. “The problem is that we have far fewer staff than we need,” says Bisht. Corbett’s staff crunch is caused by the failure of the Uttarakhand forest department to maintain optimal strength. Predictably, all the positions at the top level — manned by officials of the prestigious Indian Forest Service (IFS)— are full. Unfilled slots increase as the levels go down. Over a quarter of the 6,000-odd positions of forest guards in the state are vacant.

Rajiv Bhartari, an IFS officer who heads the Corbett Reserve, admits 40 percent of the positions under him are unfilled. In Uttarakhand, the last mass appointments came in 2002 when 700 workers were hired. Rangers say that is bad policy. Wildlife protection is not a desk job but is fostered through painstaking grooming. The skills of sensing animal distress, predicting their moods and recognising the meaning of their calls are honed over years. Says Kandpal, “There will be a large gap in the staff capabilities when a bunch retires together.” The forest guards’ union in Uttarakhand threatened a strike last month for higher pay and time-bound promotions. Instead of talking with them, the state government tightened security around the forests. Three years ago, a month-long strike had wrenched promises for promotions and better wages. These are yet to be fulfilled.

In 2004, the Supreme Court ordered the forest department to absorb dozens of daily wage labourers who had worked for it for years. One of them was Anand Ballabh Pandey, who had spent two decades as temporary staff, doing all the work of a forest guard. Starting in 1980 with a monthly wage of Rs 210, Pandey was getting only Rs 1,600 a month when the Supreme Court’s ruling came. By then he had already paid for his daughter’s wedding. Pandey, then 47, was happy to get his first government job.

Today, he splits his princely salary of Rs 7,000 to sustain two households, his quarters in the jungle and his home in the town where his wife lives with their two grown sons. “I give them money when I visit them,” he says. But the fare is Rs 180 each way and the journey of 250 km involves rides on a bus and a jeep, besides a night halt. For all the years chasing poachers and protecting the tiger, Pandey has insurance from the department that will fetch him about Rs 30,000 when he retires. Pandey is now sleepless at night worrying for the livelihood of his two sons. Despite the bleak employment scenario, the desperate never shun hope. Nineteen-year-old Vicky left school when his father, a forest guard posted at Kandpal’s range called Sarpduli, couldn’t pay his fees.

After months of job-hunting, Vicky joined his father last year in the hope of finding work here. Thanks to a scheme begun by Corbett chief Bhartari, Vicky now works as general factotum— mailboy, gatekeeper, cook and peon. He gets paid from fees that the tourists are separately charged. “One has to do all the jobs in the jungle,” says Vicky, who has also trained as a nature guide and developed sharp skills of spotting animals from afar.

There is no doubt that Vicky is already the next line of tiger protectors at Corbett in all but name. Carrying supplies in an improvised backpack of cement sackcloth, he accompanies patrols and joins in cooking at night halts. In all, there are six dozen youngrisks. On a hot summer night in May 2005, snack store assistant Madan Pandey was attacked and badly mauled by a tiger that had strayed into the Dhikala tourist lodge area. “I tried to scream but only a woman’s whispering voice came from me,” recalls Pandey, who was dragged about 50 metres and who has deep permanent scars from claw marks on his head, shoulders, arms and legs. He spent a year in hospital and claims to have paid Rs 3 lakh for restorative surgeries. The government reimbursed him only a third of the costs. He was promised a job but that hasn’t worked out.

Within a month of the tiger’s attack, Corbett chief Bhartari strung up wire fences around the ranges and tourist locations with a mild electric current of 9 volts running through them, enough to repel the animals. Pandey, 42, is still a daily wager earning Rs 3,000 a month, manning the reception of a government hotel in Ramnagar. “I don’t know how long it will take to pay my debts,” he says. Much is being made of the Tiger Protection Force to which Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has given the Rs 50-crore dole in Budget 2008. Raised across India’s tiger reserves, this force is to be manned by ex-army men given their experience of fighting insurgencies. Unlike the forest guards who have a mandate overload, the force is exclusively tasked with securing the life of the king of the jungle.

THE JOB seemed attractive to 39-year-old Narendra Singh, who retired in 2001 after serving the Indian Army for 17 years and has fought battles in Jammu and Kashmir, Sri Lanka and even Somalia. An Uttarakhand native, Singh chucked his security man’s job in faraway Chhattisgarh and signed up for the tiger in January. A four-day crash course in spotting the animal’s pugmarks was thought enough readiness for the job. Singh hasn’t been given a uniform and wears his own khaki. For someone who has fired AK-47s, rocket launchers and machine guns, Singh brings his own .315 rifle to the job. For two months, Singh wasn’t even told his pay. Ex-infantryman Kishan Singh Rawat, 46, who once marched from Srinagar to Siachen, too, signed up to pay for his children’s education. “I have fought militants, so the poachers don’t scare me,” he says. “It is the animals that we fear.”

Both Singh and Rawat are learning on the job, having already done four week-long patrols jointly with forest guards since January. At least for now, the seasoned servicemen defer to the forest guards as the real leaders of the tiger protection efforts. Rightly so, says Delhi-based wildlife enthusiast Ravi Singh, a former corporate honcho who now heads the Indian chapter of the Worldwide Fund for Nature. “If you value the fact that the forest guards are responsible for the huge heritage of this country,” says Singh,“then you will appreciate they need pecuniary advancement to keep themselves going.” The truth, however, is that both the roar of the tiger, and the softly worded plaints of its protectors, are mere cries in the wilderness.