Naxalism poses threat to tiger conservation

Insurgency seems to have affected efforts for tiger conservation in the country as wildlife protection activities for the striped cats have become difficult in the Naxal-hit areas.

Experts point out that naxals are present in seven out of 38 tiger reserves, which means no official tiger census has been conducted for a very long time. “Those are banned areas and difficult to reach. Naxal problem surely is hampering the conservation cause. Because of the fear, conservationists or government officials avoid visiting these areas. So, we remain unaware of the actual conditions of these endangered species,” says well-known wildlife conservationist Mike Pandey.

“Several times during my shoot in the northern part of the country, I have met angry young people from the banned groups, who are actually not aware of the wildlife problems,” he adds.

Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in its latest tiger census report said that reserves in areas with heavy Naxalite presence and influence were the country’s worst and the reasons for the fall in the number of tigers in these reserves can be anything — from poaching to loss of habitat.

Around 3,000 tigers are left in the world with India having nearly 1,400 striped cats in the wild. National tiger census figures released in January 2008 showed a mere 1,411 tigers alive as compared to 3,508 in 1997, a drastic drop of 60 per cent.

“The presence of insurgence in almost one-third of the country’s wildlife areas or tiger habitat are causing disturbance in breeding tiger. It is also leading to poaching. Officials are unable to protect animals and the best example would be Palamu in Jharkhand where due to the naxal presence the numbers of tiger is falling at drastic rate,” says Belinda Wright of Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI). “It also makes it impossible to monitor the tiger,” she adds.

A recently released book “Conservation for a New Era” by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) points out that extremists may not be intentionally targeting tigers but they are preventing conservation activities in the regions they control, which may be as much as 30 per cent of the India’s tiger range.