A guide to wildlife conservation in
north-eastern India in the midst of insurgency, increasing immigration,
and encroachment. By A.J.T. JOHNSINGH
NORTH-EASTERN India,
at the confluence of the Indo-Malayan, Indo-Chinese, Palearctic and
Indian biogeographic realms, is famous for its varied and rich
biological and ecological values. It comprises the “Seven Sister States”
of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland,
Tripura and the Himalayan State of Sikkim. The region can be
physiographically categorised into the eastern Himalaya and
north-eastern hills, and the Brahmaputra and Barak valley plains. It is
inhabited by nearly 160 Scheduled Tribes, speaking about 220 languages.
Faced with problems of insurgency, increasing immigration and growing
encroachment, the wildlife and the habitat of this region are in immense
danger.
The State of Wildlife in North-east India, 1996–2011: A Compilation of News from the Protected Area Update,
edited by Pankaj Sekhsaria who has been working with Kalpavriksh, and
published by Foundation for Ecological Security, strives to give
information on developments related to wildlife conservation in
north-eastern India. For 17 years and running, the Protected Area Update
(PAU) has studiously presented a consolidated account of India’s
wildlife and protected area (PA) network. Based almost entirely on what
the English media in India report on wildlife, it is a huge, valuable
database with nearly 4,000 stories and news reports.
The news
reports on north-eastern India have broadly ranged from those covering
unfortunate and unexpected events involving armymen on hunting and
wildlife souvenir collection expeditions, and tragic incidents of wild
elephants killing about 260 people in Assam since 2001 and of 280
elephants dying mostly on account of human retaliation to ceremonial
developments in the cause of wildlife protection.
Section I contains regional
news, with reports on attempts to form an inter-State biosphere reserve,
elephant and gibbon conservation, tourism, funds released for various
conservation work, encroachment (which is a humongous problem), and
population estimation of large mammals (which is a usually a hugely
flawed conservation endeavour in the country). The table “Population
Census of Important Wild Animals for the years 1997 and 2002” is full of
mistakes; it lists 1,607 rhinos in Arunachal Pradesh and 5,246 in Assam
with a note below saying that the count is only for the Namdapha Tiger
Reserve, which is in Arunachal Pradesh. The fact is that the total rhino
population in the country is less than 3,000. There is no information
on leopards in Manipur, Meghalaya and Sikkim.
Mention has been
made of Aparajita Datta, a former student of the Wildlife Institute of
India (WII) and currently a scientist of the Mysore-based Nature
Conservation Foundation (NCF). She heads the conservation programmes in
north-eastern India and was the recipient of the 2009 Women of Discovery
Award.
To get the best out of this book, one has to read through
Section 2 (“Analysis and Perspectives”), which contains seven
well-written articles. Mehak Siddiqui and Rajesh Reddi inform us that of
the 516 news reports about the north-eastern region, Assam got the
maximum coverage (404) and Tripura the least (4). Of the 516 stories,
275 were about five protected areas, all from Assam, and 138 (27 per
cent) were on the world-famous Kaziranga Tiger Reserve. Many news items
about Kaziranga were related to poaching, flooding and tourism. It
cannot be denied that Kaziranga is the best in terms of conservation
with its valiant guards protecting the rhinos and other wildlife at a
time when the government is unable to keep away encroachers.
Sonali
Ghosh, a young forest officer from the WII with a Ph.D. (on the
fascinating topic of the Indo-Bhutan Manas landscape) from Aberystywth
University, United Kingdom, writes about the importance of ‘bush meat’
(a term used in Africa) in the lives of the local people and explains
how the wildlife rescue and rehabilitation programme could take off
successfully.
Yashveer Bhatnagar, a student of WII and who now heads the snow leopard
programme in India under the aegis of the NCF, writes about the
potential for snow leopard conservation in Sikkim and Arunachal
Himalaya. He believes that tigers and snow leopards could occasionally
be coming face to face in the upper reaches of the Dihang Dibang
Biosphere Reserve and Namdapha Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh, and
concludes that the large free-ranging dog population maintained by the
army is a serious threat to wildlife, especially the snow leopard.
Defence forces do and can play a vital role in promoting snow leopard
conservation. Anwaruddin Choudhury, who knows more about north-eastern
India than anyone else in the country, has written about Karbi Anglong,
which he rightly calls ‘the little-known wilderness’ in Assam. While
carrying out his surveys in the early 1990s, Anwaruddin found the area
to be extremely rich in wildlife. In a 10 square kilometre area in the
Dhansiri forests, he saw evidence of a pair of tigers and a grown-up
cub. He is worried about the future of Karbi Anglong because of the
growing militancy, encroachment and rampant poaching.
The
association of Nimesh Ved with Samrakshan Trust from 2002 to 2010 gave
him splendid opportunities to understand the Garo hills. He rightly
observes that the greatest threat to the area comes from coal mining and
monoculture plantations. Poaching and tree-felling are also widely
prevalent.
Neeraj Vagholikar of Kalpavriksh, who has closely
tracked environmental governance issues with respect to large dams in
north-eastern India since 2001, laments that the government has taken a
casual approach to wildlife conservation by approving all hydel
projects. To save prime protected areas, endangered species like river
dolphins should be taken care of, he says. And to ensure the livelihood
of the people living downstream of the proposed dams, sincere and
sustained efforts should be made to check the planning and construction
of ecologically damaging and unsustainable dams in the eastern Himalaya.
Neema Pathak Broome, a member of Kalpavriksh who has been
championing the cause of community conservation through research,
documentation and community mobilisation, writes that community
conserved areas have emerged as a powerful new concept in the global
conservation discourse. She gives several examples of such areas in
Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. The progress of
community conserved areas in the north-eastern region, according to her,
is primarily because of a higher degree of tenure security as compared
to other regions in the country. She strongly and rightly believes that
efforts should be taken to ensure that the existing territories are not
alienated from the community in the name of development projects or
creation of PAs. She believes that the tenure can be strengthened by the
implementation of Scheduled Tribes and other Forest Dwellers
Recognition of Forest Rights Act 2006.
The
book also features an article on the statistical overview of PAs in
India, with State-wise data and details of funds released under
Centrally sponsored schemes such as Integrated Development of Wildlife
Habitats, Project Tiger and Project Elephant. India with a large human
and cattle population has established 664 PAs extending over 1,58,508
sq. km.—4.83 per cent of its total geographic area. There are 99
national parks, 516 wildlife sanctuaries, 42 conservation reserves and
seven community reserves. Thirty-nine tiger reserves and 28 elephant
reserves have also been designated. The United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation has designated five protected areas
as world heritage sites. Institutions and, if possible, individuals
interested in wildlife conservation, should possess a copy of this book.
A.J.T. Johnsingh is with the Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore and WWF-India.
