Forest rules in place to prevent wild behaviour

Almost everywhere, we see people breaking rules. In our society, even ambulances have to fight their way through traffic. More often than not, it only proves truism ‘stupidity is hard to hide’. So, instead of allowing the similar arrogance and disregard in Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve, the management decided that wildlife comes first. After all, tourism is not a right. At best, it is a tool for conservation that comes with responsibilities.
Some guides, drivers and even tourists would misuse the phones they were allowed to carry on a safari to call each other to the ‘Tiger darshan’ locations. The other vehicle at other end of the zone would then speed on the dirt track putting at risk lives of the tourists as well as animals. Animals can’t complain, tourists won’t and as far as the drivers and guides are concerned, it is a matter of earning that extra tip.
Consequently, Tadoba management was forced to ban the use of mobile phones during safaris. However, a few dishonest members in society create ‘problems for every solution’. Places like Jhalana leopard forest in Rajasthan are waiting for a bad accident to happen.
Similarly, snakes, frogs, small mammals and sometimes even deer, bears, leopards and tigers have been knocked down by speeding vehicles on highways. We must not forget that these animals are not crossing our highways, instead our roads are cutting across their homes.
In response, signages were put up requesting drivers to reduce speed, which probably may not have been readable at those speeds. So, speed-breakers had to be installed at regular intervals and specifically near crossing zones.
On the same road, often it was noticed that vehicles stopped to watch animals that came close to the road. These wildlife watchers did not realize that they were actually obstructing the animal movement. Some of them even stopped to take ‘selfies’ with the animals. Fortunately, since the ‘no-stopping’ signages specifying a penalty of Rs5,000 have been put up, the number of such enthusiastic ‘selfie-clickers’ has drastically reduced.
Another problem that the Tadoba management faced was very emotional. Sonam, Lara, Tara, Maya are names of Tadoba’s tigers, and not film stars or models. So, what was the problem with these cute and cuddly names, instead of the regular T-12, T-36 etc? Let’s go back in time when a famous tiger disappeared from a neighbouring tiger habitat. What followed was unprecedented. There were even some enthusiastic nature lovers who were willing to go into the forest, in search of this particular tiger.
However, the same enthusiasm was unseen for the other 79 nameless tigers that died in 2014 or the 81 that died in 2015. So then, why was the public uproar only about this particular tiger? Could it be because it had a name that made it famous? What the people do not understand was that the mandate of the forest department is not to save one specific animal, but the entire species and its habitat as a whole.
Conservation efforts face many more similar challenges mainly due to the ever-increasing human pressure. There, however, seems to be very little effort to check that human population growth.
(Anirudh Chaoji, director of Ran Mangli Foundation, can be reached at anirudh.chaoji@gmail.com)