Rescue act

Why in the News

Tiger conservation in West Bengal has shifted from protecting a resident population to rebuilding one from nothing, as a royal Bengal tigress caught in Bihar becomes the first tiger reintroduced in the State, in Buxa Tiger Reserve. The step has been called “a triumph of bureaucracy, not ecology”, because the State acted only after its tigers had vanished.

What is the Buxa reintroduction programme?

1. What it is: Reintroduction means moving animals from a healthy population into a habitat that has lost them, much like restocking an empty shelf.
2. Why it began: The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) found no tigers in the Buxa, Dampa and Palamau reserves by 2018. It proposed a programme with the Bengal Forest Department and the Wildlife Institute of India.
3. Scale of the plan: The tigress is the first of seven tigers to be relocated to Buxa over two years.
4. Habitat preparation: Since 2018 the partners have reintroduced chital (spotted deer), opened some forest canopy to revive grasslands, and moved villagers out of the reserve’s core to cut human wildlife conflict.
5. The takeaway: Bringing tigers back is technically possible, but it does not by itself remove the pressures that emptied the reserve.

Why did Buxa lose its tigers?

1. Human settlement: Buxa is dotted with settlements and ringed by revenue villages and tea estates, which fragment the landscape, including migration corridors, the routes animals use to move between forests.
2. Railway line: A railway line already threatens the region’s elephants, and the railways plan to restore a route to Jainti.
3. Road traffic: Commercial traffic on the Bhutan to West Bengal road through Buxa disturbs the reserve.
4. Closed canopy: Forests have grown into dense woodland with a closed canopy, which stifles grasses, so herbivore numbers dwindle.
5. Prey collapse: Chital density is dismal, so goats, macaques and cattle now replace tigers’ preferred ungulates (hoofed prey).

Is reintroduction conservation or rescue?

1. Preventive model: From 1973 India followed preventive conservation, protecting source populations, the healthy groups that breed and supply tigers, with their habitats, prey and corridors.
2. Reactive tradition: Buxa belongs to a newer, reactive tradition, alongside Sariska and Panna, where authorities intervened only after tiger populations crashed.
3. Cost of rescue: Reintroduction showcases technical capability but is more expensive and more heavy handed than prevention.
4. Inviolate core belief: Reintroduction follows Project Tiger’s belief that core habitat must be inviolate, meaning free of people. The state has used this to override the rights of Adivasis and forest dwellers and disrupt ecotourism incomes.

What would success at Buxa look like?

1. Transboundary corridor: Buxa is part of an international wildlife corridor contiguous with Phibsoo in Bhutan to the north and Manas in Assam to the east.
2. Dispersal risk: If those forests offer more prey or less disturbance, released tigers may leave Buxa.
3. Breeding test: Success means tigers establish territories and produce cubs that survive and breed, with natural immigration, tigers arriving on their own from nearby forests, keeping genetic diversity.
4. Advance, not rescue: Success also means monitoring ecological deterioration so the state acts before tigers vanish, and involving local communities in decisions on conflict and livelihoods.

Challenges

1. Conflict after release: Tigers straying into tea estates and villages can turn local opinion against the programme. Eg. Tigress Avni was shot in Maharashtra in 2018.
2. Poaching pressure: A small founder group can be wiped out quickly. Eg. Panna lost all its tigers by 2009.
3. Rights conflicts: Relocation must be voluntary under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, so coercion invites legal challenge.

Way Forward

1. Prey before predators: The State Forest Department should raise chital density through grassland management before further releases.
2. Rail mitigation: The railways should fix speed limits and build animal underpasses on forest stretches.
3. Community dividend: Route ecotourism revenue to fringe villages through eco development committees.

Conclusion

Buxa’s first tigress restores a species but not yet the conditions that lost it. Whether tiger conservation moves from rescuing reserves after collapse to watching for decline early, with forest communities as partners, remains unresolved.

Back2Basics: National Tiger Conservation Authority

1. About: A statutory body under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, created through a 2006 amendment, under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
2. Chair and role: Chaired by the Union Environment Minister, it approves State tiger conservation plans and sets norms for tiger reserves.
3. Project Tiger: It runs Project Tiger, which manages reserves through a core and buffer design.
4. Tiger census: It conducts the All India Tiger Estimation every four years.

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:”