Protect Big Five and look ahead 

India is a country of about 1.38 billion with a population density of 382 people per sq km. Yet, we were able to save the ‘Big Five’ — the tiger, elephant, lion, rhino, and leopard.

India launched Project Tiger in 1973 and this has resulted in an increase in tiger numbers. However, we still need to go a long way in tiger conservation as we could only provide protection to 52 tiger reserves to some extent. 

Our tiger populations, once dispersed outside the protected area, face the threats of poaching, habitat fragmentation, accidents due to linear infrastructure projects, and so on. However, similar success could not be seen in the case of elephant conservation in spite of declaring few elephant reserves. Probably the population of these wide-ranging animals could not increase due to the fragmentation of the forest landscapes.

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Elephant reserves also could not attain a similar legal status and administrative mechanism in Wildlife Protection Act Amendments in 2007, when compared to tiger reserves. 

In the next two decades, our Big Five — tiger, elephants, lion, rhino, and leopard, would face the challenge of habitat fragmentation and thereby increasing the frequency of human-wildlife conflicts.

The stakeholders who plan big infrastructure projects need to understand the link between wildlife conservation and landscape conservation. Local communities too need to accommodate the changing wildlife populations.

You can see the mitigation measures adopted on the Samruddhi expressway, the proposed High-Speed Train, the proposed Multimodal Corridor project, and NH-7 (now called NH-44) and you will believe that these solutions work well if done scientifically and carefully. 

The underpasses constructed on NH7 have so far been used by 11 different tigers and more than 5000 herbivores in the last two years.

The village relocation programme has been a success in India to provide inviolate spaces for tigers. The community-based conservation model established in central India in the past two decades has shown that local community and wildlife have no option other than to coexist in the vast landscapes and corridors, beyond core areas.

The nature conservancies coming up slowly are trying to address the issue of crop damages and livestock losses.

Tiger Reserves have got a legal status in Wildlife Protection Act amended in 2006 and hence we could see concrete steps for tigers through a special authority like National Tiger Conservation Authority. Other species like Leopard, Rhino, Elephant, and Wild Buffalo which live in the tiger reserves also got attention in management.

However, the same has not happened to lesser florican, the great Indian bustard, sarus cranes, and other lesser-known species like the Indian skimmer and black-bellied tern. 

(The author is Honorary Secretary, Bombay Natural History Society.)