February 13, 1999, Saturday,
Sunny, 7-20C
[21:05 @ B-57 Inn in Delhi]
Today
is a day off. I just lazed around in
the hotel room, reading mostly, and some sport TV. Cricket is really big here in India, and it dominates the
airwaves. Having watched a few matches,
I’m beginning to know the game. Still I
can’t say it’s made a captive spectator out of me.
But
I’ve been making good use of it. In the
last few speeches, I’ve achieved excellent results by starting with the recent
India v Pakistan tournament, which swept the entire nation with cricket
fever. I say something like this: “I’ve seen your great passion. I’ve seen your national pride. Today, I am going to present to you
something that should raise your great passionate national pride to a new height…” I also say, “How would you feel if a burglar
breaks into your home to steal your most prized possession? Right now, as we speak, foreign criminals
are infiltrating your country, stealing your greatest national treasure. What are you going to do about it?” And, “If the Indian people give but 1% of
your passion for cricket to saving the tiger, your tiger shall be saved.” By the end of the presentation, they are
sizzling. They are raving ready to save
their national animal, their national symbol, the soul of their nation, the
Royal Bengal tiger. Right now! I guess there is something to be said about
spectator sport after all.
In
case you think I’ve been watching TV all day, hearken back to my first
sentence. I’ve been reading too, and
not all pulp either. There is a new
book that has fallen into my lap lately – Tiger Book, by Arjan Singh, one of
India’s pre-eminent tiger conservationists.
And what I read blew my mind.
Let me relay just one point to you here. Hold on to your head, for it is about to be blown, guaranteed,
whether you care about the tiger or not.
And I don’t think I need to go to great lengths either.
We
all know that BC’s Environment Ministry is somewhat subservient to the Forest
Ministry, and this is the source of many of our habitat and species
conservation problems. Now, imagine
that the BC government has no Environment Ministry at all, and environmental
matters, wildlife included, is under the jurisdiction of the Forest Ministry. What do you think is going to happen to the
Grizzly bear habitat, and to the Grizzlies themselves? Well, this is exactly the situation in India
here. What do you think is going to
happen to tiger habitat and the tigers themselves? The Tiger Book says, “The largest foreign exchange earner in Africa
is their wildlife, under the direct impetus of tourism. In India, though we eulogize the tourist
potential of the Taj Mahal, Khajuraho and the Ajanta Caves, the Forest
Department discourages wildlife tourism…
The Forest Department is a commercial organization, and the priorities
for postings among its staff incumbents are with Social Forestry, the Forest
Corporation, the Plantation Division, and the Territorial Division. Wildlife with no economic affiliation is
shunned by all administrative personnel and is considered a punishment posting;
for the dropouts, the corrupt and the inefficient… the various departments are
not willing to allocate further land to wildlife, particularly because the
Wildlife Act does not permit commercial operations in these areas… the Forest
Department will not allow forested areas to be transferred to wildlife
projects. Forestry and wildlife are
antagonistic subjects, and cannot meaningfully be administered by the same
facility. A ‘clean’ forest floor is the
dream of the forester, but is the anathema to the wildlife enthusiasts. The precept that wildlife will exist where
there are forests is entirely misplaced.”
Second
parallel. We have all experienced the
BC government’s overblown Grizzly bear population estimate to justify continued
hunting. The Tiger Book says, “The
numbers game continues to dominate… (tiger population) census figures were
inflated to impossible numbers by Field Directors relying on pug mark tracings
by untrained and irresponsible personnel.
The Corbett Park figure, supposedly at saturation density of 44 in 1972,
was escalated to 112 by 1985-89… Compared with the Serengeti National Park in
Africa with a 5.5% increase for the social lion, an overall increase of 25% was
presented for the solitary tiger.
Census were treated as status symbols by individual directors, and my
suggestion at a meeting of the Indian Board for Wildlife, that Field Directors
should be switched around during census time was discarded by the Director of
the project. Unbridled numbers
continued to escalate…” Let alone the
10,000-13,000 Grizzly population estimate, can we trust even the pitiable
2,000-2,500 for the tiger?
Third
parallel. Imagine federal Canada has an
Endangered Species Act, but the provincial governments, being of different
parties, and answering to local voters’ demands, more often than not choose to
contravene the Act, and there is nothing the feds can do about it. Let me quote again from the Tiger Book:
“The
stark reality of the situation is that state governments cannot and will not
resist the pressure of their voting public to destroy a perceived danger (the
tiger) to their lives and livelihood.
With an exploding population and an agricultural economy - unrestrained
plantation of sugarcane, which decimate wild ungulate prey species, and the
state (provincial) government sanctioned proliferation of sugar factories,
which bring some employment to local communities – the end will come with the
extinction of the tiger. State
governments… which as an insensate resentment to accepting guidelines offered
by the Central government… have been unwilling to share expenses with the
Centre, and with different parties holding power in different states, the
direction of the Centre is unheeded, and chaos reigns supreme.”
There’s
more, but this should be enough to give you a splitting headache. Sorry, folks.