Can wildlife thrive in India without active human intervention?

Why in the News

A tigress released into the Buxa Tiger Reserve in West Bengal has begun a phased programme to build a self sustaining tiger population there. It follows Project Cheetah‘s reintroduction of cheetahs in Madhya Pradesh in 2022. Two conservation scientists now debate whether India’s wildlife can thrive without active human intervention.

What is active intervention, and why is it needed now?

1. What it is: Active intervention means people directly manage a species through captive breeding or reintroduction, like an intensive care unit for a species that cannot recover by itself.
2. Why it is needed: Human activity has altered natural systems, so some species now need ‘active management’ to escape extinction.
3. Uncertain results: The Mauritius kestrel recovered after reintroduction, but other programmes had mixed or disappointing results.
4. Too late for some: Captive breeding is costly. The saola of the Annamite Mountains (Vietnam and Laos) may be too few to breed, so its genome (genetic code) may be its main record.
5. The takeaway: Intervention can rescue a species near the edge, but it is costly and uncertain, so it cannot replace a living habitat.

Is conservation a luxury of rich countries?

1. Backhanded compliment: The Economist praised India for conserving tigers as a relatively poor country, implying conservation suits rich countries. The praise drew a backlash in India.
2. Colonial rupture: Pre British India’s agrarian, forest based economy lived alongside wildlife. Colonial technology, farm expansion and a belief in overpowering nature caused heavy wildlife loss and stripped forest dwellers of rights.
3. Poorer countries that conserve: Costa Rica, Brazil, Rwanda and Colombia made conservation part of development, and Costa Rica earns revenue from biodiversity tourism.
4. Roots of the movement: Western conservation drew on The Population Bomb and Silent Spring. Its science grew in the 1980s around the minimum viable population, the smallest population that can survive long term.

Does protecting the tiger protect the wider ecosystem?

1. Safari park warning: Project Tiger was launched in the 1970s with a warning against turning national parks into safari parks for tourists, a tendency now growing.
2. Surveys beyond tigers: Tiger surveys cover nearly four lakh sq km, four times the one lakh sq km tigers occupy, so they guide decisions across biogeographic regions, zones with distinct wildlife.
3. Flagship pull: A flagship species is a popular animal, like the tiger, that draws attention and funds. A rare frog threatened by a mine in Maharashtra draws little.
4. Limits of the flagship: Habitats hold distinct species, so tiger protection does not help every ecosystem. Wolves better represent grasslands and human dominated landscapes.

Why do fenced reserves fail some species?

1. Landscape species: Wolves and the Great Indian Bustard range across open country, so protected areas and fenced enclosures alone cannot hold them.
2. Bustard sanctuaries: Sanctuaries in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh failed because planning ignored grazing and local needs. Blackbuck then multiplied and damaged crops, turning once tolerant farmers against the birds.
3. Floods as habitat: Periodic floods sustain Terai landscapes such as Kaziranga, Dudhwa and Valmiki. People want floods prevented, a trade off conservation must manage.
4. Small reserves: India’s protected areas are small and cover little of its land. Larger landscapes act as insurance against risks science cannot yet foresee.

Challenges

1. Funding gap: India spends about ₹3,500 crore a year on conservation, roughly a third of its need, leaving protected areas outside tiger reserves short.
2. Punitive wildlife law: The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 treats research sampling like hunting, and two decades of reform attempts have failed to change it.
3. Missing data: India lacks basic data on insect abundance, so it cannot tell whether insects are declining.
4. Uneven management: Forest management built in the colonial era barely reaches the Himalayas, deserts and the Northeast.

Way Forward

1. Research friendly law: Amend the Wildlife (Protection) Act so research sampling is not treated as hunting, opening permits to researchers without institutional privilege.
2. Community landscape plans: Plan bustard and wolf habitats around grazing and local people, not fences.
3. Fund every protected area: Extend funding beyond tiger reserves.
4. Learn from breeding programmes: Treat Great Indian Bustard captive breeding as an experiment, and study the unexpected behaviour seen in vulture reintroductions.

Conclusion

India is moving from guarding reserves to managing species directly, but rescue cannot replace habitat shared with people. Larger landscapes, community support and adequate money will decide whether intervention saves species or only displays them.

Key numbers

1. Conservation funding need: ₹9,500 crore to ₹10,000 crore a year.
2. Protected areas: about 5% of India’s land; average size about 200 sq km.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2024] Consider the following statements: Statement-I: The Indian Flying Fox is placed under the “vermin” category in the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. Statement-II: The Indian Flying Fox feeds on the blood of other animals. Which one of the following is correct in respect of the above statements? (a) Both statement I and Statement II are correct and statement II explains statement I (b) Both Statement-I and Statement-II are correct, but Statement-II does not explain Statement-I (c) Staement- I is correct , but Statement II is incorrect* (d) Statement-I is incorrect, but Statement-II is correct ANSWER:”