The much fancied growl…
The dreaded look…
The envious yellow/black stripes…
and that majestic walk…
I am sure most of us, in their childhood days, have seen a Royal Bengal Tiger in a zoo. It is hard to erase those childhood memories. Today situation has changed and many youngsters are fortunate enough to get the first hand feel of the beautiful beast in the wild.
Suddenly there were over half a dozen celebrities convincing through different media the need to save tiger…for general masses the consequences of project ‘Save Tiger’ are beyond their comprehension which includes me too.
Why is it so important to save the tiger?
Why so much of hullabaloo for a beast who stays in the wild and in a way doesn’t directly affect us?
A chance interaction with Mr. Dharmendra, an associate of Mr. Fatehsingh Rathore who doesn’t require any introduction for wild life lovers provided me with answers on how important tigers are for our own survival. It may sound selfish to the point, but if our coming generations need to survive; we need to save this wild beauty from poachers and help in every possible way to create more awareness in saving them.
Before I elaborate further on this loveable beast, it would be quite interesting for everyone to understand the passion, eccentricity and devotion of one man who almost single handedly nurtured and blossomed today’s Ranthambore National Park. Credited with over 50 years of love for the tigers, Mr. Fatehsingh had practically lived his early years while creating the tiger sanctuary amidst constant death threats. It went further to the point that he was brutally assaulted by locals for objecting the cattle grazing in the forest zone. Contrary to the beliefs of locals, this legendary hero resolved and fought even stronger to make the habitat tiger friendly. In due course, he succeeded in making the locals realise the importance of tigers for them and everyone. He is a recepient of International Valour Award conferred on him in 1983 and currently is the Honorary Warden of the Ranthambore National Park. He has started a school for locals with special emphasis on Wild Life Conservation.
Last summer, Bandhavgarh fascinated me to the core and therein decided to visit at least one wild life sanctuary every year. Keeping up with the promise, this summer I opted to visit Ranthambore National Park, located near Sawai Madhopur in Rajasthan. The real importance of why these national parks were created and subsequent attempt of the government to save the tigers was realised when we met Mr. Dharmendra in the school initiated by Mr. Fatehsingh for the local children.
Mr. Dharmendra, a close aide of Mr. Fatehsingh for over 8 years made sure that we had enough treasure of knowledge as would have been imparted by the legend himself. The praise worthy fact is his in-depth study under the guidance of Mr. Fatehsingh which he passed on without any reservation. According to him the project ‘Save Tiger’ could be called off if we are able to get the population from current 1400 to 3000. You would be surprised to correlate this figures, if you were to understand that once, India was home to roughly 40,000 tigers at the beginning of 20th century.
One is left searching for the answer to a natural question which pops up…why settle for less, when we managed with 40,000. The reason though is simple – we do not have enough forests to support a population of more than 3000 tigers in the wild. Flabbergasted? So was I. But as this article is about tigers, we will not deviate our topic to forest conservation. Forests will grow and survive, if we allow tiger to live peacefully and multiply in due course of time.
I am quoting few facts as understood from the interaction, which would help you realise the importance of tiger and why we need to save them -
1) The tigers, lions, leopards, cheetahs are apex predators. If there are no tigers, herbivores will breed out of proportion, leading to overgrazing of land venturing into human territory for greener pastures including agricultural produce.
2) When herbivores overgraze, top soil is eroded during the rains, leading to floods and landslides. The catastrophe continues with loss in fertility of the soil, jamming of dams due to soil deposit leading to lesser storage of water and eventual loss to vegetation.
3) With loss of forests, rains would be sparse leading to water shortage. If river goes dry, hydel power stations will stop leading to crisis in supplies in cities and rural areas. With tigers there would be lot of trees around, controlled quantity of herbivores and lots of water for hydel power plants.
4)Tigers and other apex predators keep other secondary predators in check. In their absence, these secondary predators would drive their prey to extinction and then shall attack domestic animals and humans too
5) Depleting tiger quantity means depleting forests. Forests not only regulate temperatures, they catch and help store rainwater that recharges ground water. ” Today over 500 rivers originate from tiger habitat.” Loss of forests means river run dry leading to acute water shortage.
6) Forests play a major role in regulating temperatures by synthesizing carbon dioxide, which heats up the atmosphere. Save forests by saving tigers
For the time being, even if we do not want to care for tiger and are not interested in his beauty and habitat, at least for our own self interest, we have to make every attempt to save him. The life without tigers would be a series of catastrophes and probably too late to rectify.
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