“Tigers belong where their feet take them; where their senses tell them that they are safe to occupy an area. They belong where they can meet their existing needs,” said Pranav Chanchani, national lead for tiger conservation at the World Wide Fund for Nature, India (WWF-India).
Delivering a talk on ‘Tigers amidst People, People amidst Tigers: Making Conservation Work in Multi-Use Landscapes’, Mr. Chanchani said, “There is a question of where people and tigers should reside. For example, if you take in Pilibhit Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pradesh, some of the tigers which were radio-collared. We found every time these animals hit the forest boundary they turned away. Tigers belong where their feet take them, they belong where their senses tell them they are sort of safe to occupy an area. They belong where they can meet their existing needs.”
He added that establishing a protected area or reserve does not guarantee conservation success.
“Just because you establish a protected area or reserve does not guarantee conservation success. Now one might say we don’t know the timescale of these reserves; some may be new some may be old. But if we look back at tiger reserves that were created in 1970’s, of the original nine, there are three or four which are sort of succeeding and there are an equal number that have failed miserably. Some of them have no tigers to date,” he added.
He said that the outcome of conservation in protected areas in India is also mixed.
“If you look at the 500 odd protected areas across India and conservation outcomes of not only tigers but a variety of species, the conservation outcomes are very mixed. Globally they (protected areas) are set up to preserve biodiversity, but in the context of tiger conservation, the outcomes have really been patchy,” he said.
