Navtej's Indian wildlife conservation
For the protection of its wildlife India has set aside well over 500 National Parks, Sanctuaries and Reserves within its area of approximately 3 million square kilometres. However, protected areas in India constitute only 2 % of the total geographical area of the country. India's biodiversity is exceptional and in some cases unique. We all know of the Himalayas as being the tallest mountain chain in the World. However, India also boasts the World's (i) largest mangrove forests within the Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal, (ii) largest brackish water lagoon ( Lake Chilika ), (iii) largest salt desert situated in the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat state. Two of our largest rivers, the Ganges and Brahmaputra, between them sequester as much as 20% of the World's global carbon as pointed out by writer Pranay Lal in his book, "INDICA : A Deep Natural History of The Indian Subcontinent."
In 1973 Project Tiger was launched by the then Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, and today there are well over 50 Tiger Reserves and between 2500-300 tigers representing at least 80% of the total world population. Most of India's tiger population ( as much as 60% ) occur outside protected areas and the Tiger Reserves in India represent a small fraction of the total tiger habitat within India (an area estimated to be around 700,000 square kilometres).
After Africa, India is home to the largest array of mega-fauna species. It is also unique in being home to four of the world's biggest cat species and 4 of the 5 species belonging to the Panthera genus namely the tiger, lion, leopard and snow leopard. India has the largest number of cat species of any country in the world, 15 in all ; besides the big cats already referred to the other species include the Himalayan lynx, clouded leopard, golden cat, marbled cat, fishing cat, desert cat, leopard cat, jungle cat, caracal, Pallas' cat, and the rusty spotted cat which is the smallest cat species in the World. India hosts the world's only populations of : (i) gharial crocodile (which also happens to be the world's longest crocodilian and the only surviving member of its genus), (ii) one of the only two extant species of river or freshwater dolphin in the World, the Gangetic dolphin, the other species being the Amazonian river dolphin (ii) pygmy hog ( the smallest member of the suidae family in the world) , (iii) one-horned rhinoceros ( second in size only to the White rhino of South Africa )and (iv) the world's largest wild cattle, the gaur, (v) the World's only extant genetically pure Wild Asiatic buffaloes (the species which holds the record of possessing the longest horn length the record being 108 inches ). Unlike Africa, India is host to wolf species regarded as ancestral to the entire wolf-dog clade ( the plains and Himalayan wolves ), bears ( five species including Himalayan brown, Himalayan black,Tibetan blue, sloth and sun bears ), numerous species of deer ( hog, chital or spotted deer, sambar, twelve-tined swamp or barasingha, brow-antlered, Kashmir red, barking and Musk deers ) wild goats such as the ibex and markhor, wild sheep such as the argali or Marco Polo sheep and the Urial as well as goat-antelopes (related to North America's musk-ox) such as the Himalayan and Nilgiri Tahrs, bharal, goral, serow and taken. Like Africa, India has antelope and gazelle species but whereas Africa may boast dozens of such species India has very few comparitively ; in India there is the nilgai or blue bull ( the size and weight of an African greater kudu ), the duiker-sized chowsingha which is the only four-horned antelope species in the world, the blackbuck, the chinkara or Indian gazelle, the Tibetan gazelle and the Tibetan antelope or Chiru. Two of the world's four wild equid species are found in India : the Khur or wild ass of Gujarat and the Kiang the wild ass of Tibet and Ladakh the latter being the largest and heaviest of all wild equids. Primate species in India are represented mostly by numerous macaque and langur species and one species of gibbon, the hoolock gibbon which is the second largest species of the gibbon family after the siamang of Indonesia and Malaysia. Rodent species in India are numerous among which the Indo-Malayan giant squirrel, Malabar giant squirrel and giant flying squirrel species are among the largest and heaviest species in the sciuridae family. Among the smaller carnivore species the striped-necked mongoose and crab-eating mongoose are two of the largest species within the Mustelid and Herpestid families ( which includes mongoose, weasels, martens and stoats ) exceeded only by the North American and Eurasian wolverine in size. Besides the cats, bears, wolves and hyenas ( one species, the striped ) there are numerous canid species including the wild dog or dhole, several species of red fox including the white-footed desert fox and the Tibetan sand fox, the Indian fox and golden backed jackal.
As for birds, India can boast species such as the sarus crane which is the tallest flying bird in the world at almost 6 feet when standing erect, the great Indian bustard which is the word's heaviest flying bird, the peafowl which besides being the largest member of the pheasant family is also unique to the subcontinent, the largest species of hornbill that being the greater pied, and a number of bird species with the longest wingspans ( exceeding that even of the Andean Condor ) such as the lammergeier or bearded vulture, the cinereous vulture and the great white pelican.
Of reptile species India is home to both the largest venomous and non-venomous species of snake : the king cobra and reticulated python respectively. India's coastline also holds some of the last remaining viable nesting sites for the world's most endangered species of marine turtle such as the leatherback, hawksbill, green and olive ridley turtles (the beaches of Orissa state in north-east India are among the largest marine turtle nesting sites in the world with as many as 300-800,000 olive ridley turtles nesting there each year). A number of the world's largest freshwater turtle species are found in India's rivers and backwaters such as the narrow-headed soft-shell turtle ( with a carapace length of 3.5 feet and body mass of 300kgs ).
However, we cannot be complaisant about the future survival of our pristine habitats and wildlife species within India. The past century provides warnings as to what can befall us if we drop our guard. Since 1900 two species of rhino ( the Javan and Sumatran ) have become extinct within the subcontinent till which time India was the only country with 3 species of rhino. The Javan and Sumatran rhinos were detailed by the great British naturalist, Richard Lydekker, in his book " The Wild Animals of India, Burma, Malaya and Tibet" published in 1900. In this work reference is made to the two aforementioned rhino species which were found from the Sundarbans in West Bengal through Assam and even as far as into the Terai jungles of Bhutan and Sikkim. The Asiatic cheetah once abundant in Northern and Central India became extinct in 1947. The Indian wolf whose numbers were estimated at around 100,000 at the end of the Nineteenth Century witnessed a massive decline in population to the extent that today their numbers are as few as 2-3000 throughout the Peninsula. Similarly, the Himalayan wolf which was once common throughout the hilly tracts of the North West Himalayas is reduced today to around 300 individuals confined principally to parts of Lahaul and Spiti Valley, Zanskar and Changthang in Ladakh.The Himalayan brown bear was also to be found 50-100 years ago across the Northern Himalayas at the higher altitudes. Its population currently stands at just 500 individuals confined to small pockets mainly in Drass, Tillel and Suru Valleys in Ladakh. The sun bear, the World's smallest ursid species, could be found throughout the lowland evergreen forests of North-east India but whose existence today is hanging by a thread its occurrence confined to small and poorly protected areas such as Barak Valley in Southern Assam or Namdapha National Park where poaching of wild animals is rampant among the tribal populations living within. To date, there has been no data collated on the sun bear to determine the extent and distribution of its population within India or whether its numbers are already so few as to be bordering on extinction.The hangul, India's only species of red deer, is now found only in one National Park, Dachigam, close to Srinagar in Kashmir. Its numbers are estimated at just 2-300 which is shocking in light of how abundant its numbers were prior to Indian Independence. Similarly, the brow antlered deer or sangai is found in just one small protected area in Manipur. The barasingha or swamp deer that was prolific within the tall grasslands of Northern and Central India was close to extinction by the early 1970s since which time its numbers have recovered but still not to healthy levels ; among all three sub-species there are around 1000 individuas widely scattered from Kanha in Madhya Pradesh to Hastinapur and Kishanpur Sanctuaries in UP, Pilibhit Tiger Reserve in Uttarakhand and Kaziranga National Park in Assam. India's largest primate and sole gibbon species, the hoolock gibbon, was studied extensively by Dr J K Sati formerly of the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehra Dun. In his research work on the hoolock carried out around 1970 Sati and others put the population of the species within North-East India at about 50,000 individuals. In 2021 that population stands at just 3000 or thereabouts confined to a tiny fraction of the original habitat and of which in the whole of Assam where the species had been most abundant in such tiny pockets as the 20 square kilometre Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary near Jorhat. The same predicament is true of two other primate species whose numbers once ranged in the tens of thousands but which today stand at no more than between 3-6000 each : the Nilgiri langur and lion tailed macaque of South india. The Gangetic river dolphin was once found throughout the Ganga and Brahmaputra watersheds numbering again in the tens of thousands well into the Twentieth Century. Their numbers have seen a drastic and worrying decline and now scientists believe that their numbers are as few as 1500-1800 individuals with a 50% per cent decline just within the last 10 years. Worse still, the surviving individuals of the species are scattered across a vast and disjointed area : within the hundreds of kilometres of the Chambal River which falls in 3 states ( Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan ) there could be today as few as 80 individuals remaining. The gharial which besides being the largest living crocodilian ( with a record 23 feet in length as detailed in a specimen collected by the Royal Asiatic Society of Kolkata in the early part of the Twentieth Century ), the only surviving member of its genus Gavialis which includes some of the largest reptiles that ever lived such as Rhamposuchus the dinosaur-killer which lived 100 million years ago and India's largest aquatic species, is still threatened with extinction. Whereas it was abundant in the Brahmaputra, Son, Ken, Mahanadi, Ganga and Yamuna rivers and tributaries until Independence today it hangs on precariously in just a few sanctuaries such as the National Chambal Sanctuary, the Ken gharial sanctuary and within the Girwa River of Katarniaghat Tiger Reserve. The total adult population of the species is no more than 200-250 individuals again widely dispersed and in a reproductive bottleneck.
Therefore, in India since 1972 we have had enormous success in bringing back from the brink of extinction a number of species the most publicised being the cases of the Indian one-horned rhino, the Asiatic lion, the tiger, even the gharial and marsh crocodile. But the numbers of these species and the concentration of their populations should raise concerns while in some cases the credit for their conservation predates the 1972 Indian Wildlife Act and subsequent creation of National Parks especially under Project Tiger. For example, it was the Nawab of Junagadh who protected what were the last remaining Asiatic lions back in 1914 where throughout the country only a dozen or so lions remained all confined to his kingdom. The Indian government after Independence only inherited what had already been initiated for the species by the Nawab along with the British decades earlier. Today there are 600 lions but all still remaining within the areas surrounding the erstwhile Nawab's former dominions : the 2000 square kilometre Gir National park. Lions have dispersed to a wider area encompassing some 20,000 square kilometres extending from Gir ( up to Porbandar, Bhavnagar,Junagadh, Diu, Kutch, and the border with Maharashtra ). But the species' distribution still falls short of its historic range which included not just West India but the Punjab and most of northern and central India ( extending thus from Lahore where Maharaja Ranjit Singh hunted lions in the 1810s as recorded by the British Residents at his Court, Slade and Metcalfe, to Guna in MP up to the 1860s and 1870s and as far as Palamau in Bihar/Jharkhand.) Attempts since Independence to introduce the species to some of its former haunts have failed : the attempted relocation to the forests around Hastinapur in current day Uttar Pradesh in the 1950s for instance. The Supreme Court of India has made an order for individuals from Gir to be translocated to Kuno in Madhya Pradesh but to date the Order has not been complied with. Nonetheless, there still remains a wide variety of other suitable locations for translocation within MP and Rajasthan states. The current population confined to a small area combined with the already acute inbreeding ( as all individuals stem from the dozen or so original survivors a century ago ) does not forebode well for the species particularly in the case of an acute disease outbreak such as canine distemper ( which in the 1970s wiped out as many as 300 of the healthy, virile, genetically robust African lion population in Ngorongoro, Tanzania ). The analogy between the Asiatic lion and Indian one-horned rhino is interesting insofar as both species were on the verge of extinction at the turn of the Twentieth Century and at the time of British Colonial Rule. in 1908 only 20 one-horned rhinos remained in India. It was at the behest of Lady Curzon, wife to the then Viceroy of India, that the species was given full legal protection against hunting and poaching. Therefore, the momentum for the conservation of this species had been put into effect by the British 6-7 decades prior to any legislation enacted by Independent India for wildlife protection. Admittedly, whether through the efforts of the Administration pre-or post post-Independence or a combination of both, the rhino's population exceeds today 3000 individuals but once more inhibited by a species dispersal survival bottleneck and conundrum ; 80% of this population resides in a tiny protected area, Kaziranga National Park of only 500 square kilometres in size, while the remainder is scattered in other protected areas mostly in North-East India such as Manas, Pabitora and Orang National Parks. No attempts had been made until very recently to reintroduce the species to those areas of the country which formerly encompassed the species' extensive range and where good habitat still exists ( such as the terai jungles of what is today Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand where rhinos were recorded up to 1878 and to where now only in the case of Dudhwa National Park a few individuals from Kaziranga have been transplanted ). Of course the rhino cannot be reintroduced to all of its former range on account of the fact that much of such geographical area has succumbed to human habitation and urbanisation ( Peshawar and Multan where Babur hunted rhinos or Aligarh near Meerut where even Jahangir was able to find and hunt wild individuals during his lifetime ).
In conclusion, India has been successful since Independence in saving numerous species of wildlife from extinction. However, saving certain species from extinction does not necessarily imply successful conservation which must be sustained but is compromised where the species concerned are confined to a very small percentage of their former habitat with limited prospects for dispersal into newer habitats so as to ensure an increase in their numbers, improvement of gene inflow, reduced competition for food resources and greater resilience against disease and against specific biotic pressures and human activities. In 50 years, the lion population has only increased by a few hundred individuals at the most whereas the conservation of the species had it been properly managed from the outset the population might have numbered in the thousands now especially having regard to the fact that cats are prolific breeders but require sufficient territory and prey base. In the 1970s and 1980s thousands of gharials bred in facilities ( such as the Madras Crocodile Breeding Centre ) were released in numerous river systems in India but despite all those efforts the wild population today is still very low. Perhaps the most pertinent and poignant example is Project Tiger which when inaugurated in 1972 there were no more than 1500 tigers remanning in the country. Today we laud the success of Project Tiger in saving the species from extinction but in 50 years the species' population has only doubled while simultaneously the human population has risen by huge leaps and bounds, forested areas have become markedly reduced, degraded or denuded of resources, and potential prey base populations for tigers have taken a downward turn. Prevention of a species' extinction represents only one milestone in wildlife conservation while preservation of the species is the second milestone and one which India now needs to embark upon more conscientiously. A healthy population is one that is abundant and widespread. A number of species in India as touched upon earlier need to be provided with greater resources, manpower and publicity and not sidetracked as hitherto they have been in favour of other more charismatic species which could be cashed in especially for eco-tourism ( tigers, rhinos and elephants in particular ). Such species are surviving on tenterhooks and although may not be facing immediate extinction are seeing their numbers not increase exponentially as compared to other species because of stressful, inhumane and unjustified obstacles to their daily existence. In the case of gharials and river dolphins, these factors constitute illegal sand mining, siltage of rivers through deforestation and erosion through human practices, excessive use of nets for fishing, emission of industrial effluent. With regard to wild carnivore populations one of the major aggravating factors include the uncontrolled increase in feral dog populations which are encroaching Protected Areas, spreading diseases such as rabies and canine distemper to wild carnivores, attacking wild herbivores which are the prey base for the numerous wild carnivores. In order to implement successful wildlife conservation policies The Ministry of Environment and Forests must have regard numerous inter-dependent factors which include :
(i) Facilitating the migration of wild animals between protected areas through well-connected corridors and buffers to prevent inbreeding bottlenecks and infighting especially among carnivores where the inability, for example, of Beta male tigers to establish their own territories away from those of the Alpha males in the absence of available forested areas causes fatal confrontations, affects breeding and also results in higher mortality rates all round;
(ii) Setting aside funding, colleges and training facilities to ensure that Protected Areas have access to properly trained veterinary personnel for diagnosis and treatment of diseases ( such as rabies, canine distemper among predator populations or tuberculosis, rinderpest, foot and mouth, brucellosis among wild ungulates), for tranquillisation and vaccination of sick and problem animals as well as sterilisation of feral dogs and cats;
(iii) Working with farmers, agronomists and soil experts to find effective solutions and remedies to the situation with regard to intense industrialised agriculture near forested areas with an over-dependency on chemical pesticides, insecticides and fertilisers and which are having an adverse impact on species within the food chain leading up to apex predators;
(iv) Establishing more effective, regular and widespread Transect studies in forested areas along with more effective census studies for wild species incorporating modern techniques backed by technology ( camera trapping, drone surveillance, DNA testing etc );
(v)Creating local community awareness programmes through education and information gathering, involvement in sustainable eco-development programs especially in predominantly backward Tribal areas as can be witnessed in Mocha near Kanha vis-a-vis the removal of lantana from the forest areas and conversion into furniture for commercial sale or the commercial manufacture of bamboo products for domestic usage in villages close to Chimur bordering Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve such as Palasgaon;
(vi) Launching eco-tourism initiatives empowering local communities as with the Homestays set up through the Snow Leopard Conservancy Trust in Ulley and Rumbak in Hemis High Altitude National Park, Ladakh, or the safari jeep and guides unions in Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve and buffer areas within Maharashtra and finally;
(vii) Militarising forest officers so as to have the most effective means to deter armed poachers ( as has been carried out for decades within Chitwan and Kaziranga National Parks in Nepal and India and for which the wild animal populations and particularly the rhino have been able to withstand the threats posed to them ).