Big cats between state & science

The Rise and Fall of the Emerald Tigers

Ten Years of Research in Panna National Park

Raghu Chundawat

Speaking Tiger Books

356 pages; Rs 899

There are few large vertebrates as magnetic and as beleaguered as the tiger in its Asian homelands. In 1972, fresh from the glory of the Bangladesh war, it was under Indira Gandhi that India took a major step towards its preservation. The country’s foresters were asked to count tigers. On the lines of fingerprinting perfected by a member of the Imperial Police Service, each tiger was presumed to have a distinctive paw print. The count began.

The results were a wake-up call. The pugmarks counted near ponds, waterholes and streams were rounded off, compared and studied and the magic number was 1,827. Give or take a few, it was clear the great cat was in trouble as never before. Come April 1973, and India launched Project Tiger. Not just the tiger but the wider ecological system was protected in nine select reserves.

The Project has since expanded and is rightly credited with having been a case of success at the eleventh hour not for one charismatic species as much as for trying out a model of total preservation of nature’s web of life in select locations. It is in one of these that the author sets his story.

Panna is a dry forest, which at the time wildlife biologist Raghu Chundawat did his most intensive research, 1996 to 2004, saw a substantial recovery of the prey and predator populations. This former hunting reserve of minor princes, nestled in the catchment of the Ken River is where he set out to be the tiger and tigresses’ Boswell.

The pictures and the pen portraits of the individuals emerged out of tough teamwork and at a time the park authorities and researchers worked in tandem.
 

A change of guard coincided with a fresh wave of poaching of the great cats for body parts. When Dr Chundawat turned whistle blower, first in private and then in public, he was berated, and eventually not allowed into the park. A near-decade of research indicated the tiger population was fragile. It collapsed and then died out.

His line was vindicated when in 2009 the reserve was repopulated by bringing in animals from other parks in Madhya Pradesh. But far from lessons learnt, a veil has been drawn over the past. As in Sariska in 2005, so too in Panna, the authorities remember nothing, forget nothing. 

Dr Chundawat’s is a book of rare courage, not with the great cats who, here, do not attack humans. The threat is from know-all officers who can shut down access for research on a whim.  The author stops short of calling for a drastic overhaul of the edifice of the government of the forest and the wild. Strong on critique, he is reluctant to endorse radical reform.

Tigers as apex predators face an uncertain future. The reserve cannot hold enough breeding tigresses. His future blueprint would involve small satellite reserves well beyond park boundaries.

In his portrait of the tendu leaf gatherers and herders, this is a writer who shows an empathy for the tiger’s human neighbours. Drawing on his own experiences of running a specialist wildlife lodge, he argues private-public partnerships can generate revenues, which he is particular should be shared with local communities.

This is by no means a first of its kind. In 1968, the great wildlife biologist, George Schaller wrote The Deer and the Tiger, based on his work in the Kanha Park. The next decade saw fine works on the Chitwan Park in Nepal. Ranthambhore, not far from Delhi, and Nagarahole in Karnataka have also been subjects of fine popular works.

Yet Emerald Tigers is a book that stands apart. There are individual animals with quaint names like Baavan or 52 so named for the markings above the eyes. This kind of deep knowledge of individuals in the absence of live baits (as in Chitwan) or water bodies where the great cats come out in the open (Ranthambhore) marks out Dr Chundawat as an exceptional naturalist.

The life cycle of the species is taken up with notes from the field. There are accounts of a mother teaching half-grown cubs to hunt boars and fawns. And there are encounters the elusive leopard and the russet coloured wild dog. 

Panna is important due to its low rainfall, barely 110 cm a year. The profusion life forms is now under threat due to the Ken Betwa dam that will inundate a large part of the forest. But this book should give pause: This is a living library of flora and fauna, a slice of dry forest that, contrary to first impressions is a refuge of rare life forms.

Sadly, the scientific basis of policy is often wafer thin. “The boss is always right” philosophy is absurd when applied to tiger pug marks: When no big cat was in evidence, it was even suggested they had migrated out! 

The clash of statecraft and science go well beyond the tigers of Panna. They lie at the heart of the search for an India where knowledge of nature and society guide policy. There are miles to go. The saga of the emerald tigers can be a beacon in the quest.

The reviewer teaches history and environmental studies at Ashoka University