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And now, Panna

It might take a Sherlock Holmes to unravel the mystery of the disappearance of tigers in Madhya Pradesh’s Panna reserve. Only last year, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Wildlife Institute of India produced a joint report that estimated the tiger population in the Panna landscape (which is larger than the reserve) at 24. But since December 2008 there has been no evidence of tigers in the reserve. Panna, sadly, is just a fragment spread over 97 4 square kilometres in the famed central Indian tiger habitat. After losing its linkages to Bandhavgarh reserve, it could host only a ‘single source’ population of the cat. To the great shame of the Madhya Pradesh government, Panna has followed in the footsteps of Sariska. The State, with tiger presence in as much as 15,614 square kilometres, evidently did precious little to avert the catastrophe. It is now scrambling to translocate tigers from other parks to a tiger reserve without tigers. Two tigresses have been shifted to Panna from Bandhavgarh and Kanha. But without good follow-up measures, they may end up like the former residents of the reserve. A male cannot be shifted, as the relevant translocation protocol is not yet available.

There are clear lessons to be drawn from Sariska and Panna. First, something urgent needs to be done about the failure of State forest departments to respond to scientists’ alerts on a developing crisis. Well-known tiger biologists have complained that their cautionary messages to the Madhya Pradesh government on tiger declines in Panna over the past five years met with a hostile response. The lack of conservation accountability at the State level was highlighted in February 2009 by the Parliamentary Consultative Committee of the Ministry of Environment and Forests. A bureaucratic approach to forest management, which generally resists scientific scrutiny of parks and sanctuaries, is taking a toll on wildlife. Yet, if State governments are keen, they can access the best conservation tools and benefit from the guidance of highly motivated scientists. Globally validated techniques to monitor tigers and their prey at all levels — reserve, region, and country — are now published in manual form. The Wildlife Conservation Society has hosted an India-based open-access video tutorial on these techniques on YouTube. The NTCA should persuade the relevant States to use the resources and make data available to conservationists. It must also help create State committees to monitor tiger populations, prosecute poachers without compromise, and create buffer zones for parks. Without the political will, more local extinctions of tigers are inevitable.

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