The latest government-sponsored tiger census found Nagarahole and its two neighbouring parks to have among the densest concentrations of the estimated 1,400 tigers left in the Indian wilds. But that total is still fewer than half the number estimated five years ago. Since the report was issued in February, the government has ordered the creation of eight new tiger reserves, in addition to the existing 28.
Karanth surveys Nagarahole with the zeal of a purist. He sits in the spartan government-run forest lodge with the lights out, listening to the night sounds. He forbids talking in his jeep when he drives through the park. It disturbs the animals, he said. His ears are attuned to the screeches of langurs and peafowl which are often the most reliable signal that a tiger is near.
Spotting one, Karanth became a man possessed. As the big male crossed the road, he revved the engine, sped up the track, looped around and waited for the tiger to cross the next opening in the trees. “I know all their tricks by now,” he muttered. No sooner had he stopped the jeep, scaring off a pair of jungle fowl, than the tiger emerged again, marching across the path and disappearing behind the trees.
“This is a great place to be born a tiger,” he said. But it is perhaps less so to be born a man, woman or child. The relocation efforts here and in nearby parks that have helped revive the big cats have yielded mixed results for people, Karanth admits. Some families left the forest on their own years ago because they could no longer make a living there. Others left after the government offered land elsewhere.
Then there are those who refuse to leave. “It is we who brought up this forest,” snapped an old man named Kanchan, who belonged to a tribe of honey collectors and lived at the other end of the park. “It’s not their grandfather’s property. They don’t understand the value of the forest.”
Karanth, 59, who has aided relocation efforts here and in several nearby sanctuaries, said India can have room for its tigers and its people but the government must make it worthwhile for villagers to empty the national parks.
“I’m against any moving of people unless there is a positive improvement in their livelihoods,” he said. “If this happened in the ’50s and ’60s when India was starving, I would have said, fine, we don’t have room for tigers. Now we have 9% economic growth, and we don’t have room for tigers?”
The experience of Nagarahole over the last 20 years suggests that the problem is not as simple as whether villagers should make way for wildlife, but rather whether the government can offer them a better life if they do — namely land, water and work.
J.S. Bharati was born more than 30 years ago in the vanished hamlet of Kanthur. On a low-lying field where Karanth stood scanning the tree line for wildlife, her family grew rice and millet, battling the menace of elephants, until forest officials prohibited farming altogether and rigorously enforced bans on hunting and grazing. The family moved to a new cluster of mud-and-thatch homes, inside the park but along the main road, next to schools and a post office.