Under the law, scientific proof must be
produced before relocating human settlements from forest areas
New Delhi: A law that seeks to confer the right to land and other
resources on forest dwellers is a challenge to the government to prove
that its creation of about 600 national parks and other wildlife
sanctuaries had sufficiently scientific grounds.
The tiger, which carries the torch for the cause of wildlife
conservation in India, exists in just 36 of these protected areas. The
others are home to elephants and rhinos, the more glamorous vanguards
of conservation, and a variety of animal life, including snow leopards,
black bucks and wild asses, turtles and ghariyals.
Evidence that a scientific rationale existed for creating these
national parks and animal sanctuaries is crucial to designate them
“inviolate”, or free of human habitation, as planned by the ministry of
environment and forests.
The so-called Forest Rights Act of 2006, which the government is trying
to implement now, requires the evidence to legitimize any moves to
shift human settlements from forest areas. The law seeks to confer on
tribals and other forest dwelling communities the rights to land and
resources they have lived off for generations.
Tiger parks have already been declared inviolate in a move that has
sparked a conflict in some areas, pitting the cause of wildlife
conservation against the rights of forest dwellers who may be required
to shift out.
“The forest department has a history of protecting areas by locking
people out,” says Mahesh Rangarajan, a historian of conservation and
ecology. “Though not all protected areas lack science, a lot of them
were declared so with enormous ad hocism.”
Does India have a logical and fair protection regime for both
biodiversity and people? Which species are critical enough to
legitimize the relocation of locals in areas where economic value is
key for villagers and an orchid may be more important to a scientist?
Those questions are still being asked more than 40 years after India
started protecting areas for forest and wildlife conservation.
Can’t be utopian
“The fixed idea of conservation on a legal basis is not feasible,” says
R. Sukumar, professor of elephant biology and conservation at the
Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
“In reality, we can and should change some boundaries (of protected
areas) and ease conflicts. Himachal Pradesh has denotified four
wildlife sanctuaries.”
“We can’t be utopian here,” he adds. “Science is just a part of the
answer and you have to understand what is feasible.”
Some scientists maintain that the 81,000 sq. km under protection is the
bare minimum required for the cause of conservation. “I don’t agree
that too much area has been set out for conservation,” says K. Ulhas
Karanth, one of India’s leading tiger scientists. “Today, the tiger,
globally, is left with only 7% of its original range area, compared to
300 years ago. We are talking about a species whose area has shrunk by
more than 90%. But the selection of areas (for tiger reserves) might
not have been very correct.”
A little more than one-fifth of India’s land area is covered by
forests, according to the Forest Survey of India. Just 4% of the land
is protected area. Millions of people, including many tribal
communities, live in or around the forest areas, living off their
produce and water and using them as grazing grounds.
“In the Indian context of protection, every square kilometre has always
had a history of human use,” says Ravi Chellam, director and senior
fellow at the New Delhi-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and
the Environment. “And we copied our protection regime from the
temperate countries, doing very little to adapt it (to local
conditions),” he says. “We definitely need to debate its consonance
with socio-economic concerns and PA (protected area) management.”
Making amends?
Chellam says that the science of conservation, as it is known today,
didn’t exist when India started notifying protected areas. “Whatever
wilderness existed then and was available for conservation was
protected,” he says. “PAs today are making the most of a bad deal.”
But some scientists say that the mistakes of the past are being
corrected. “Forty years have passed, yes,” says Sukumar. “And things
have been rectified quite a bit. Earlier reserves were notified as such
for larger mammals, which mostly exist in tropical deciduous forests,
and these are the only areas which ended up getting protected. But
India is diverse, with 16 major biomes (ecosystems), and certain states
have declared reserves in other types of biomes as well.”
India, for the outside world, has always been the land of tigers and
elephants. And wildlife conservation has largely been about the big
mammals, too. Tigers, elephants and lions are known as the flagship
species, which serve as indicators of the general health of an
ecosystem.
In the 1970s, India launched Project Tiger — aimed at tiger
conservation in specially constituted reserves — after a 1972 census
showed that the beast’s numbers had dwindled to 1,827, from as many as
40,000 at the start of the century. In 1992, it began Project Elephant
for the protection of elephants, their habitat and corridors.
The conservation of big mammals, or megafauna, might receive more land,
attention and money, but it also indirectly helps smaller wildlife.
“Tigers, lions and elephants are large vertebrates, therefore need more
land and thus help protect a larger habitat,” says Chellam.
Elephants don’t really care about protected areas. “PAs don’t mean
anything to the elephant, as large numbers exist outside. For elephant
conservation, the landscape needs to be protected, which is under
process in Project Elephant,” says Sukumar.
In Orissa, for instance, elephant populations are highly dispersed,
making conservation difficult. “There has to be a proper land use
policy. (In Orissa) we need a map of all resources (minerals), a map of
forest cover and an elephant population map. Then we need to evolve a
plan on what are the areas worth keeping, or can be conserved. The rest
should be turned over to development,” he added.
Human pressure
While developmental activities — such as mining, industries, roads and
power generation projects — are considered impediments to protecting
wildlife, human pressure on forest resources is another.
And just as one conservation model cannot be used across species, the
same is true of the effects of human presence. While tigers might need
inviolate spaces to survive, others might not. Sarus cranes, an
endangered species, exist and nest mostly in agricultural marshlands.
Etawah in Uttar Pradesh has a long history of coexistence between
farmers and cranes.
Now, with all reserves populated by tigers having been declared
critical habitat, it is the turn of other species. Critical or not,
wildlife and forest conservation has been and will continue to be
pitted against development and growth needs.
But a delicate concurrence among stakeholders that policy, science and
economics have to work together bodes a good beginning to a sorely
needed reassessment of past and future strategies of wildlife
management, conservationists say.
Offering incentives for conservation to locals also helps. The Nature
Conservation Foundation, in partnership with the Snow Leopard Trust,
for instance, has been experimenting with community-based management of
human-snow leopard conflicts in the remote higher Himalayan landscape.
In these efforts, the group has involved local communities in Spiti in
Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh to assist in greater protection of snow
leopards and their prey, and a community-run livestock insurance
programme that offsets losses stemming from attacks by snow leopards or
wolves.
“Wildlife conservation in a country like ours, and indeed in most other
parts of the world, is a lot about economics, particularly of local
communities,” says Charudutt Mishra, director of science and
conservation, Snow Leopard Trust, and founder trustee of the Nature
Conservation Foundation. “We as a society need to ask ourselves what
price we are willing to pay for economic development, on the one hand,
and wildlife conservation, on the other. Both are essential, and there
is no easy answer.”
http://www.livemint.com/2008/09/10233616/Onus-on-govt-to-prove-forests.html
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