Nominate a warrior for the Jumbo Foundation Awards

It takes more than eco-tourism or tokenism to save the tiger. Improving the lot of conservation's foot-soldiers can be a good start.

Forest officer Prabhu Swamy at one of the best-maintained anti-poaching camps in Bandipur. It is a permanent masonry structure equipped with solar panels for electricity and a handpump (which elephants destroyed). Not all camps boast such luxuries.

It's Wildlife Week. Apart from routine ribbon-cutting and exhibitions of photographs trophy-hunted in the wild, we armchair conservationists will do what is expected of us, and various agencies responsible for making the right noises will do what is expected of them. 


With the coincident holiday season and the monsoon receding from our skies, tourism to wildlife sanctuaries will see a humongous rush. Particularly tourism with an "eco" prefixed precariously to it. Last year, the total foreign exchange earned from tourism in general was Rs 64,889 crore -- I don't have figures for what proportion of these earnings came from adventure and wildlife tourism. However, it is clear that the Ministry of Tourism is driving so-called eco-tourism hard, with plenty of incentives for hospitality concerns. Awards such as "Best Eco-friendly Hotel", "Best Responsible Tourism Project" and "Best Eco-friendly Practices by Tour Operators" are rewarded every year. No doubt, the sector is set to grow even as forest cover is increasingly fragmented and urbanisation exerts increasing pressure on forests.


While we Green Ogres might lean in favour of the budget jungle holiday and, on principle, patronise government-run hospitality as far as possible, most eco-tourists prefer the luxury of privately run eco-lodges and camps on the fringes of wildlife reserves. Although many of these concerns have revenue-sharing partnerships with the forest department (which issues entry permits and manages related administrative tasks), tourists are never exposed to the circumstances under which forest staff work.


Clearly, it takes more to save the tiger -- described somewhat facetiously on the Tourism Ministry's website as "Our National Beauties" -- than pumping up tourism. For forests to remain relatively inviolate and for tigers to continue to inhabit them, encroachment, fragmentation and poaching must be checked. Everyone from the high-profile cricketer to the oomphy starlet wants to save tigers, but photo exhibitions, mega-events and suchlike publicity extravaganzas are not going to do it. Tokenism isn't quite enough. 


For Arun and me, that fact became clear when we were invited to visit an anti-poaching camp in Bandipur at the behest of the Kumble Foundation. The experience opened our eyes to the abject reality of conservation, the plight of the foot-soldiers who police our forests at the lowest level of the hierarchical ladder. Their lives are plagued by poverty, ill-health and worries over an uncertain future. And you want them to save the tiger?


In the next two week, we will present to you a detailed report on the reality of life in an anti-poaching camp. But before that, do your sincerest bit on the occasion of Wildlife Week. 


Go to the Kumble Foundation's website and nominate a forest worker that you know of for the many categories of Jumbo Wildlife Awards for 2011. Make haste -- the last date for accepting nominations is October 16.

Mumbai's trash flows from urban jungle to national park

There's a good reason to keep humans out of forests: Trash!

Some people stood here to enjoy the scenery, and left behind evidence of ample enjoyment

At birdsofbombay, Sunjoy Monga posted about a cleanup drive in Sanjay Gandhi National Park. A tireless team comprising schoolchildren and other volunteers recovered a large amount of trash from the national park, which is a virtual ghetto inside the city. 


And guess what most of the trash consisted of? Booze bottles - some half-full, others half-empty. Empty foil packets of wafers and gutkha - that awful-smelling stuff that some people sprinkle into their mouths from an elevation of half a foot. Now, this is must be a truly amazing way to celebrate Wildlife Week, no? 


When the Forest Department wakes up from its stupor, maybe it will give us some sober answers. I've seen this happen in every national park that I have visited - Bandipur, Mudumalai, Nagarahole, Bhadra, Periyar. For most of us urban chameleons, national parks offer a perfect hideaway from the city. But what some people do when they go there is unpardonable. 


Most national parks have effete, unconvincing signboards emblazoned with some weak cliche about saving our forests. Few of them offer the real reasons why you should not travel with stuff that tends to become trash. And if you do, why you should take your trash home. Most forest department workers are not educated about this aspect in the first place, so enforcement is not even on the horizon. 

Was it illiteracy or plain insensitivity that led people to litter below a signboard entreating them not to do so?

I once travelled on a safari in Bandipur with a bunch of engineering college students. One of them was playing music on a Walkman so loud that all of us could hear the screech of the playback singer's sibilants and the thump of jhankaar beats. I'm sure the animals heard him, too, a mile away. And, helped ably by the rattle and trundle of the diesel van that took us on the safari, we saw nothing but jungle fowl and the backside of an elephant. 


At Muthodi, my friends and I came across a group of surly drunks at the Shegekan Guest House. We hoped to stay here in order to have convenient access to the sholas. The Forest Department put us up at the dormitory downhill, denying us permission to stay at the guest house because someone connected to a minister had booked the place. Driving up, we heard the tinkle of bottles even before the guest house came into view. 


And, even as we stood watching Crimson-backed Sunbirds in that horrible garden planted with many exotics including a Christmas Tree, a couple of unsavoury characters argued loudly on the balcony, their beers and rums having gotten the better of them. We grumbled to the caretaker but got nothing except a helpless smile. And steel tumblers of coffee, at our expense. I stepped close to him unwittingly, and - sniff, sniff - my nose discovered the reason for his nonchalance. Booze makes quick friends. And if you have a quarter bottle to spare, rules melt like an ice cube in a glass of neat double malt.