CAN THE MAN-ANIMAL 'CONFLICT' IN MHADEI BE SOLVED BY ELIMINATING TIGERS?

Shikaar,  or game hunting has always been the pastime of kings and royals. Royalty gradually got eroded but royal pastimes such as these did not. The prizes, of game hunting, skins and carcasses of majestic animals, were displayed as trophies on mantle pieces of India’s landlords. But times have changed. From the supposed valour or hunting down nature’s best living beings with bullets or poison, this became a trade, for sheer commerce. However, with forest cover shrinking and the conflict over habitation, the killing of animals became a fall out of the fight for space.

Unfortunately, in this equation, governments are run by human beings and with greed being the flip side of development, it’s a battle which is getting lopsided. Even with a veneer of equality in terms of wild life protection and forest departments, the ultimate facilitation seems to be towards deluding forest cover, and getting the animal simply out of the conflict by eliminating it. So if there are no animals, there is no man-animal conflict.

In the forests of Mhadei, which has seen a trail of death this week with an entire family of tigers being wiped out, easily the biggest single wildlife disaster in India in years, and should be seen as such, the tragedy has to been seen as a concerted attempt to take tigers out of the equation in India’s most sensitive biodiversity hotspot, the Western Ghats.

According to Environmentalist Rajendra Kerker, this is the worst ever incident of the killing of tigers in Goa and the first such since the 1997 killing at Pissurlem.

Narrowing it down to the act of simple frustrated local villagers, poisoning the tiger and her three cubs, would be losing a critical opportunity and duty to broad base investigations, if getting to the truth is indeed the objective.

But the problem isn’t as simplistic as the Chief Minister feels. The killings are a fall out of a long list of unresolved issues.

But before we go into that, here’s an anecdote which is good to remember. A tiger was killed in the forests of Pissurlem in 1997. After the killing, and through 1998, environmentalists approached the Lieutenant General Jack Farj Rafael Jacob, who was in charge of the government during President’s rule asking for Mhadei to be notified as a Wild Life Sanctuary. Governor Jacob reacted sharply to this and told environmentalist Rajendra Kerker, “Come back with evidence that tigers are in danger”. Kerker returned with the claws of the dead tiger. That moved the Governor leading to the provisional notification of Mhadei as a WLS in May 1999. (Under Section 18 of the Wild Life Protection Act).

While this offered protection to wildlife even before the final notification, till now, which is 20 years later, the process for the final notification of the Mhadei Wildlife sanctuary has not been done. And this point has been totally missed even as pressure is applied to transfer such officers out.

But getting the animal out of the equation by eliminating it cannot become a standard protocol to hide failings, which is not looking at the settlement issues of those inhabitants of the forest. This has to be on priority so that both co-exist harmoniously. This attempt at creating a space for co existence has not been done and attempted to be short circuited by attacking the softer target ‑ animals, while at the same time, keeping the lives of those who live in the forests in limbo by ignoring settlement claims.

Let us understand clearly, what is happening ‑ humans are not getting settled, and animals are allowed to be killed. 

Chief Minister Dr Sawant’s call to relocate people from the sanctuary now, is surprising because settling people has been a core issue for 20 years. And no government has taken this seriously.

A very important practical aspect of notifying an area as a wildlife sanctuary entails the range forest officer documenting details of all inhabitants including their homes and land and deciding on pending issues like crop damage and other compensation. This is a precursor to the formal notification as a wildlife sanctuary, which either requires the current habitants to move out and get compensated, or delink the areas of habitation from the boundaries of the sanctuary.

Chief Wildlife Warden and Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Santosh Kumar confirmed to Herald that the final notification under Section 26 of the Wild Life Protection, notifying Mhadei as a Wild Life Sanctuary is still pending.

Imagine twenty plus years (since May 1999) has passed and this has still not been done. Ask those in the know the reason for this and the reply is shocking. A senior forest officer, serving currently explained, “No one wants to be moved out of traditional habitats and homes where generations have been living and almost as if on cue, the government appoints range forest officers from the local areas who have relatives living in the forest areas. Will the RFO, therefore make any move towards displacing his relatives or known people? The moment you have good RFOs from outside the area who work by the book (the example of Paresh Parab was given in this context), change begins to happen. Then villagers react and pressure is applied to transfer such officers out.”

Quite simply, this issue has been allowed to simmer. But even when you heat water on this mode, it does come to a boil. Issues kept on the simmer mode too come to a boil. Look at the settlement of people, inside the sanctuary. There are about five dwellings inside the Vanguinim hamlet, two dwellings in the Kadwal cluster of the forests and about thirty settlements in Bondir and Kazredhat hamlets.

They have no tar road to their hamlets, they have been demanding compensation for crops to no avail. And yet they have no documents, except evidence of their visual presence and have their lives in a limbo. When you dig deep, there’s a complication at every bend. In 2006, the Central Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court told the Goa government that not a blade of grass should be removed from the protected area. But when you have “settlers” whose rights have neither been established nor settled, how do you expect them not to touch a blade of grass, where they live?

Therefore this extreme delay, slackness or willful strategy not to protect the area, its wildlife and settle habitants has had three fall outs 1) Left a rich bio-diversity hotspot like the Mhadei forests of the Western Ghats absolutely vulnerable; 2) Has allowed forest dwellers to remain in what should be protected areas, leading to the famed man-animal conflict, with crop damage and killing of domestic cattle and 3) It has left avenues open for industrial lobbies to attempt to influence government to leave out large tracts of protected forests. After all, when issues like this are not settled, the grey areas outnumber the black and white areas. And it is in this grey zone that dark activities happen, like the following.

Not one, not two, not three, but four tigers, 3 cubs and their mother were felled almost simultaneously and their carcasses discovered over four days in the forests of Golavalli village in the Thane-Dongurli panchayat of the Sattari Taluka in the remote north eastern part of Goa within the Mhadei wild life sanctuary. Rajendra Kerker said that common ground level knowledge was that the forests had seven tigers including 3 from the contiguous forests across the State’s borders. That would put the count in the Goa corridor as 4. But the Wildlife Institute of India report on the status of tigers in India in 2018 listed the count as 3. The Goa government’s forest department’s wildlife section recorded 5 tigers in 2018. It is unclear whether this is specific to the Goa corridor or could have included those who cross over from the contiguous border. Thus, with the loss of 4 tigers the population of the Goa corridor is almost wiped out.

If these murders don’t change the script of keeping the tiger (and all animal species) as dispensible and not settling rights of forest inhabitants, to prolong Mhadei in the grey zone of not becoming a fully notified Wild Life Sanctuary and then a tiger reserve, nothing will.

One can only hope, that when it took an environmentalist to actually present the claws of the dead tiger of Pissurlem to Governor Jacob, to spur action leading to the provisional notification of the Mhadei Wild Life Sanctuary in 1999, the dead carcasses of four tigers, will be enough price for Mhadei to be fully notified as a WLS and then a tiger reserve.

That it takes such deaths to trigger action, is a cause of shame. But nobody seems shameful.