There are no more than 1,400 left in India today; over a quarter of them (about 366) in the western ghats. But each one has to be counted, for that’s how valuable the tiger is. And not just because it’s India’s national animal because also because it is the most endangered species in the world. On Friday, volunteers joined forest department staff during the year-long census at the Bandipur national park.
Photograph: Karnataka Photo News
Also read: Why our Nagarahole scores over Ranthambore
In Nagarahole, tigers are like city buses….
‘Nagalinga raised his arm. Behind was a charging elephant cow’
churumuri 
The tiger census is the most idiotic thing. They used to come to my village when I was a child for the tiger census. I had accompanied them.
Most of the people those who conduct census know nothing about tigers.
Recently our local forest officer was telling me that there are still 10 tigers in the Sharavathi Valley Wildlife Sanctuary.
The local forest dwellers say it is less than 5.
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I had been to the Tiger census in 1999, at Bandipur again. I agree with DP Satish, when he says that most of them know nothing about tigers. And there are some youth who go there just for the ‘thrill’ and to enjoy drinks with friends. And the RFO himself was so disinterested, he wanted a transfer from that place to someplace else where there was more money. We were just college students and he was so desperate, he asked us if we knew anyone in Vidhana Soudha…! If only the Center could spend a fraction of the money it spends on infrastructure these days, on the Forest Depts, pay the Forest Guards and better equip them..
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@DP Satish,Pelican
How does one signup to volunteer for this ? Any ideas?
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@Karihaida,
I really don’t know. Forest Dept people used to come to our village when I was a child. We would go with them.
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Karihaida avre…
The FD sends these information to the newspapers and in turn the dailies print them with address of the local FD office requesting interested people to send a written letter indicating their interest. The FD then posts an invitation, also asking the person to get along more like minded people for the census.
BTW, some hope, http://www.deccanheraldepaper.com/pdf/2010/01/24/20100124aD005100008.jpg
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@Pelican,
thanks for the info.
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Tiger Conservation is a perverse obsession of the elitist.
Some wild life enthusiasts have grandly declared that if tigers go, we humans go. Therefore, they chorus: we should save the tiger in our own interest.
I wonder how tigers can save humans. Are the lives of 1100 million people in India dependent on 1500 tigers? Huh?
It is better to conserve pigs. They can do what the BBMP can’t. Clean the shit on Bangalore’s streets.
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@ simple – you are herby renamed “simpleton” just for this single comment.
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I fully with agree with Mr. Simple. 99% of our conservationists and enviornomentalists know nothing except English. They are clever lobbyists.
They know what to say and how to speak.
The best environmentalists and conservationists are villagers and forest dwellers.
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Wonder if Simple would have said what he said if he knew project tiger was a favorite project of his idol- Indira Gandhi.
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Gaby,
Show me one posting of mine where i have blindly supported Indira Gandhi and I will stop writing in these columns. In fact i am one of the harshest critics of Emergency and the anti-sikh riots of 1984. So please save your misdirected breath.
in any case why do you have do drag Gandhis into everything?
Chill Ms. Gaby.
Yella Ok
See? this is what i get from tiger lovers like you. Abuses. Personal Abuses. You guys always attack the person, but do not respond to the issues that I raise.
D P Satish
your last line is absolutely true.
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The theory behind tigers save humans is, if the tigers are saved, the forests are automatically saved. That means, the forest that has the national animal, is protected. If the forests are protected, so are the rivers from nearly where all our rivers originate or from where the tributaries originate. If these very sources of water are not protected, what will become of the world? As some great person has already said, or was it Shekar Kapur, future wars will be fought not for oil, but for water.. So true.. Think Mr. Simple… Would you go to a pig farm for a Pig Safari with your kid? There is a lot of thought involved behind such measures, about saving the tiger. Its not a clamor for glamour…
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Thanks for the elaborate explanation. But the moot question remains:
How can 1500 tigers save 1100 million people?
are you telling me that the entire forest area in India will vanish if 1500 tigers die?
How can 1000000s of forest area just go extinct if merely 1500 tigers die?
How? Beats me.
Elaborate please.
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pelican avaru has already given a basic tutorial on the importance of the issue.
i will only add this to the general disgruntlement on this thread. we all read a lot of books and have romantic notions about scientific work. i have been privileged to work with scientists – biologists, mathematicians and systems types and even those who specialize in adminstration of science. i will tell you this – scientific work is full of self doubt, unglamorous hard work, dealing with unknowns, desperate tries, hail mary passes (govinda anta neergiLiyodu) etc… the whole point about science is not being cocksure, but understanding the limitations and being empirical/phenomological about it and no taking comfort in irresponsible/ignorant positions like:
Recently our local forest officer was telling me that there are still 10 tigers in the Sharavathi Valley Wildlife Sanctuary.
The local forest dwellers say it is less than 5.
The best environmentalists and conservationists are villagers and forest dwellers.
dp satish’s 99% means nothing.
***
simple,satish,
if your intent was to say that any lasting solution was to involve locals, i agree. but nothing either of you wrote conveyed that message. instead what you wrote was some sort of fatalistic romantic pastoralism .
***
simplore.
i agree with the spirit of yella ok’s assessment only i will be more generous, give you the benefit of doubt and say you are a naive urbanite with juvenile notions of romantic pastoralism.
basically, substantiate your claim. and i warn you, i will haul you on coals if you make a stupid hand wavy argument. i want an educated argument complete with citations and quantifiable numbers that prove that Tiger Conservation is a perverse obsession of the elitist. and It is better to conserve pigs. They can do what the BBMP can’t. Clean the shit on Bangalore’s streets.
same goes to shri d.p. satish avaru. please elaborate/substantiate/make a case for your generalization that puts the ecological concerns of a random villager on par with trained , concerned ‘elite’.
i will drop my resume a bit here. i an not a biologist. what i do for my anna sambar used to be only tangentially related eco concerns. so my then boss volunteered my services for a study. so for a three months 12-14 hours a day, 7 days/week i was tasked with the donkey work involved in collecting samples for a scientific study on a river who ecosystem had been damaged by such worthies as GE. work involved hauling 30-40 pounds of weight over 10-30 feet every 15-20 minutes. collect samples. sort ropes. haul weights, make labels, etc. please note since this was in water, every time we lowered the probes (with 40 pounds weight to account for currents) we were also lowering heavy boat anchors. i knew none of the biology, and new none of the chemistry involved in all this. but the data i helped collect was poured over and studied over atleast 6 months in the labs and they – the actual biologists – wrote some pretty worthy papers. how do i know the papers were worthy, when i know no biology? bcoz, i have seen the number of citations of those papers grow the years. more importantly i have heard of governmental policies change over as a consequence of that study in local news. even more importantly, when we doing it, local ‘villagers’ and ‘townsmen’ would walk up to us on piers and thank us for the work we doing. and, while doing this, did i see passionate river keepers and totally disillusioned and disgruntled government babus? for sure.
what i did is what i did. gives me a perspective thats all. but simple and satish should substantiate their wanton pissing on actual efforts of people.
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@DPS
Maybe you can just use “Journalists and economists” in your statement “99% of our conservationists and enviornomentalists know nothing except English.”
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This exercise not just involves counting/photographing tigers (if at all you see them). The first few days involves studying the tree/shrubs pattern that support the herbivores. The wealth of these determine the healthy/unhealthy presence of herbivores, whose presence is very critical to the carnivores. It is an elaborate exercise where one has to work from 6-9, 10-1 and 2-5 to earn your hot ragi mudde and sambar.
‘Tiger census’ is a loose term
If we protect these 1500 and allow them to multiply the more secure our forests will get…ultimately boosting water ‘production’. More the number of tigers, less the interference of humans in the forest – by way of collecting wood, cattle grazing…this will help forests to regenerate on their own. During one of my visits to Bandipura, the RFO showed a patch of land where the lost forest was recovered when human interference was completely stopped. All that the Dept did – build a new watch post, and automatically the villagers on the fringe stopped meddling. Rich growth of shrubs and trees could be seen here.
Villagers, too play a crucial role in protecting the forests
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thanks kennedy for elaborating on what goes on.
to all the aLumoonjis and all the anubhavakk apashruti meeTers and all the auteurs of apasvara, and all the patronizing obscurantists in this thread:
read this, and read this with care…. this might all be english and eloquence. but the obscurantists in their blindness cant even say it like this.
http://www.hindu.com/2010/01/28/stories/2010012852930400.htm
the authenticity of the results will depend on the robustness of the data collected by volunteers in the first phase. Officials in the Forest Department here expressed satisfaction on the quality of work displayed by the volunteers. D. Rajkumar of the Wildlife Conservation Foundation, Mysore, who conducted training for the volunteers, told The Hindu that the data collection was vigorous, and what was heartening was the change in official mindset not to lay emphasis only on the dubious pug-mark counting method that gave misleading picture of the status of the tiger population in the past.
During the first phase, the volunteers looked for indirect evidence and conducted carnivore sign survey by scanning the forest along the line transects for pug marks, scats, scratch marks left on tree barks etc. After this, they looked for indirect evidence of ungulates like pellets of spotted deer, sambar and barking deer, apart from taking note of elephant and Gaur dung in the ungulate encounter rate exercise. In addition, the data collection included visual sighting of tigers, all of which would be analysed in perspective with the vegetation of the landscape and extrapolated with the results obtained from camera trap techniques which will commence next month.
the above is a quote. look for the desperate urge to justify their stance. instead of pushing -the i know better than you and so you better listen to me line, the author of that article is feeling the mujugara to explain his line, almost apologetically. dayavaiTTu-ri, solpa dayamaaDbeku, summane havadalli lekka haaktilla naavu, beeDu beeja nu lekka haaktidivi aayta. please bejaar maaDkobeDi, tappu tiLibeDi type of attitude.
kennedy. villagers play a crucial role. a pivotal role if i may add. for they know the the lay of the land and more importantly they are the ones who interact and live there. but we must understand, they are also humans like us – who work mainly bcoz of the bottomline. but they might know the big picture. the whole point is to align their bottom line with the big picture.
and if it was upto me, keep these nattering nebobs of negativism, out of the picture by force. but it is not upto me. thankfully.
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Tsubba
1. For all your rambling, you still have not given a SHRED OF DATA TO prove how a mere fistful of tigers can save an entire country of 1100 million people.
2. In 1900, around a 110 years ago, the tiger population in India was much much much more than it is today. And, the human population in India, was far far far lesser than what it is today.
To be specific; The tiger population was an impressive 40,000 while human population was a mere 250 million.
Today, a good 110 years, interestingly, while tiger poluation actually plumetted by rougly 25 times, human population went up by 4.5 times!
So how can one say, if tigers go, humans too go, when all evidence points to exactly the opposite?
By this kind of glaring, unshakeable evidence is it fair to conclude that:
a) If tiger population comes down, human population goes up. And tigers aren’t really as indispensable to humans as it is made out by so called tiger conservationaist experts.
or
b) There is no relation to tiger population and human population. And it is all a grandiose imagination of the wildlife talk, talk, talkathonists!
3. There is absolutly no evidence whatsover for people like Tsubba, Yella Ok and Pelican for all their loud flatulent claims.
On one hand, Tsubba says that I have to back what i say with quanifiable numbers (well, i just did, 100 years back there were less humans and more tigers), But he has ABSOLUTELY NO quantifiable numbers to prove what he believes in!
Strange. What’s good for the goose, isn’t apparently good for the , oh well, you guys get the drift.
4. Tsubba and other presumptious guys who say tiger conservation is a must, please show me solid data where:
1) herbivores population has gone up in India
2) because herbivores popluation has increased, forests vanished
3) because forests vanished, rivers vanished.
4) because rivers vanished, humans vanished. ( or will vanish)
Humans certainly haven’t vanished. Because they grew by 450% since 1900. If humans haven’t vanished is it fair to conclude the reverse
1) Humans haven’t vanished because rivers are still active and kicking
2) rivers are active and kicking because forests are still active and kicking
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dear sir,
i accept defeat. you have made a brilliant case and shown me earth shattering statistics, which i did not know before. i shall change my ways and strive to rear pigs.
i also didnot know that forests can survive by themselves and are not subject to any other modern day pushes and pulls. just planting a billion trees in our backyards will give us the green cover. ecosystem is a fancy word. biodiversity – as a enabler of a healthy ecosystem- an even more fancy term.
thanks
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@Simple,
totally agree with you. You have made a great argument with the stats that you have provided. This forest/wildlife conservation is a bogus scam. We should first get rid of the forest dept and then start with clearing up all forest land. Lets start with Bannerghatta, it can free up so much for real estate development.
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simpleore.
i apologize for making this personal. from what i have read and gathered, you are one the few people of this board who is willing to question and learn. i will try to get back to you in phursott. cant promise right now bcoz i have a new boss who is a task master. i am hardly able to perform my samsaarika/daihika duties in time including emptying my bladders in time, let alone do justice to discussions here and elsewhere.
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Simple….you can make real good video games and puzzles.
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simplesh kumar..
a 110 years ago there was not much need to conserve the forest as it is today. the pressure the human population has put over the last remaining patches of forest is unimaginable. though you have the stats, you are forgetting that the human race will not vanish the very moment the last tiger roaming the surface of the planet vanishes. humans may not have vanished by their 450% growth in these 110 years, but with the extinction of the tiger, the villagers, who other wise [with the tigers roaming the forests] wouldnt enter the forest for gathering firewood, for cattle grazing, would do so. and slowly the herbivores within the forest will contract diseases from the domesticated animals, which are normally infected and are highly dangerous for the sensitive wild herbivores. from here on the decline of the herbivores begins. after this there is no need to protect the forest, cos by then there would be none left to.
im no biologist to pull out stats and figures to answer your Qs, but all this what i have written is common sense.
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Dear Mr. P
With a name like Pelican, i can understand your zeal in striving for wildlife conservation.
But that gentle ribbing apart, What you have told me is ho-hum. That’s what well fed, well-dressed, well-spoken, wildlife conservations blabber on TV, but then again, whatever you say is full of presumption. No diamond-solid evidence at all.
And as for the rest of you who have taken potshots at me, i just say this: Back your argument with evidence.
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@tsubbu
—–
i will tell you this – scientific work is full of self doubt, unglamorous hard work, dealing with unknowns, desperate tries, hail mary passes (govinda anta neergiLiyodu) etc… the whole point about science is not being cocksure, but understanding the limitations and being empirical/phenomological about it and no taking comfort in irresponsible/ignorant positions
—–
~ awesome write up
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May Tippu, the Tiger of Mysore, rise among us again. It is time we saw some validation for Karnad’s dreams about Tippu.
While we are awaiting the arrival of Tippu, let’s also hope for the rebirth of Tiger Varadaachaari.
If you know of any other tigers, paper tigers tigresses included, let us all know.
Don’t rattle Tsubba. Who else can give us ecology, philosophy, history, statistics, topography, all in one long paragraph? I would be sorry to see him turn silent on us.
On the issue in question: I suppose we need to educate even those who claim to support the big cats. Where is Ulhaas Kaaranth these days?
There was a time when the poor creatures used to commit suicide because they were not up to par with honest cows. “DharanNimandala madhydolage . . …” We should be more interested in creating new Punyakotis with the help of the matha in Raamachandrapura.
Rama, Rama.
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@Pulikeshi the last,
“Don’t rattle Tsubba. Who else can give us ecology, philosophy, history, statistics, topography, all in one long paragraph? I would be sorry to see him turn silent on us.”
TSubba (Tarlesubba?) has indeed turned silent. Have been missing his kannada mishrita Inglis for a long time. Tamaasheyaagide – naavella kannada maataadovaaga English words galanna sersidre avru Englishnalli bareebekaadre kannada padagolna turkistaare, adbhuta kannadapremi.
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