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Conservation Biology, Pages 815–817Volume 11, No. 3, June 1997

Saving the Tiger: More Money or Less Power?

VASANT K. SABERWAL

Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, 9 Bow Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.,email vsaberwa@hsph.harvard.edu

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) at the BronxZoo, New York, has recently released a policy analysisentitled

Saving the Tiger: a Conservation Strategy

(Nor-chi & Bolze 1995). The conservation community needsto be aware of this report because of the influence WCSand similar international agencies have on wildlife pol-icy formulation throughout the world. (For example,WCS recently co-sponsored two biodiversity confer-ences attended by officials from China, India, Lao P. D.R., Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam to discuss is-sues of biodiversity, including tiger conservation.) Theelegantly produced report does two things: provides ananalysis of the current threats to tiger conservationworldwide and offers policy recommendations for moreeffective conservation of the big cat. Trade in tiger partsand continuing human pressures on tiger habitat areseen as the primary factors responsible for declining ti-ger numbers. Key recommendations of the report in-clude improved law enforcement, the eviction of hu-mans from tiger habitat, and conservation education ofconsumers of tiger products and local communities liv-ing near tiger habitat.

At the heart of the WCS report lies the suggestion thatthere is insufficient political commitment to tiger con-servation. The report cites Nepal’s staggering annual ex-penditure of $5800 per square kilometer “to protect andbetter manage Royal Chitwan National Park” (p. 10) asan example of the kind of political commitment re-quired for effective conservation in other parts of the ti-ger’s range. Such expenditure is necessary to conductcampaigns in consumer countries about the impact ofthe use of tiger products on tiger populations, a conser-vation focus that is essential, and one that I will not ad-dress further in this note. According to the WCS report,money is also required to educate local communitiesabout the importance of tiger conservation; translocatehuman populations from within tiger reserves to areasof less conservation importance; build walls and otherdeterrents to keep local people and their cattle out of ti-

ger reserves; and arm protected area guards with sophis-ticated weaponry.

A cheaper, more effective, and, arguably, more realis-tic means of checking tiger poaching is the generationof local support for tiger conservation. Although the re-port refers to the need for generating such support, myconcern is with the manner in which the WCS proposesto go about this delicate business.

Conservation education is seen as a critical factor ingenerating local support, and the report points to theneed for educating people living near tigers “... on thebenefits of conservation and the important ecologicalrole of tigers” (p. 23). Such a position on conservationeducation displays a lack of appreciation for the roots oflocal animosity toward state-initiated conservation pro-grams. Such animosity typically derives from the exclu-sion of local communities from protected areas andgrossly inadequate compensation following human, live-stock, and crop losses to large mammals (Neumann1992; Saberwal et al. 1994; Sukumar 1994). Educationabout the long-term ecological benefits of tiger conser-vation can hold little meaning for a villager whose dailysubsistence is at stake or one who has suffered a per-sonal loss to a tiger attack. Remarkably, the report goeson to suggest that governments should “require educa-tional classes for poachers and illegal traders” (p. 23).Do Norchi and Bolze seriously believe that poachingtakes place because of inadequate education?

The report’s suggestions regarding the exclusion ofhumans and livestock from areas of conservation inter-est cannot be expected to generate local support for ti-ger conservation. In particular, the suggestion that “fund-ing institutions that are concerned with maintainingbiodiversity in Asia should direct funding to well plannedrelocation schemes” (p. 21) is cause for grave concern.The hardships that have accompanied translocation pro-grams in India have been amply documented (Thukral etal. 1992); the current conflict between the Indian gov-ernment and oustees from the Narmada Dam is wellknown internationally and is a remarkable backdrop to acall for more relocation schemes. The report’s sugges-tion that the provision of “... agricultural lands, housing,

Paper submitted September 6, 1996; revised manuscript acceptedJanuary 17, 1997.

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Saving the Tiger Saberwal

Conservation BiologyVolume 11, No. 3, June 1997

water sources, and other amenities” (p. 10) constitutes awell-planned relocation program fails to recognize amore basic problem associated with such programs:such moves have associated costs of social fragmenta-tion, which can devastate communities. One wondershow the authors of the report would feel if forced tomove to a village in India or Brazil or the Sudan becausetheir consumerist lifestyle represented a grave threat tothe world’s environment.

Similarly, the suggestion that “integrated community de-velopment programs should reorient the extraction of nat-ural resources from inside tiger habitat to areas lying out-side” (p. 21) takes for granted the existence of such areasthat could serve as substitutes for areas upon which peopleare currently dependent. There are numerous situationsin which protected areas are the only source of fuel-wood and fodder for local settlements. In the absence ofalternative sources for fodder and fuel, is the eliminationof human resource use within tiger habitat necessary?

Much recent research points to the coexistence of hu-mans with high levels of biological diversity (Posey1985; Western 1989; Saberwal 1996). Maasai pastoralistsin the Serengeti are an example of such coexistence, asare the Maldhari herders within the Gir forest, in Gu-jarat, India, home to the last surviving wild population ofthe Asiatic lion. In the face of mounting evidence for thepotential compatibility of humans and wildlife, the em-phasis placed by the WCS report on the need to excludelocals from tiger reserves is increasingly untenable, rep-resenting an unnecessary financial expenditure and re-sponsibility for increasing local animosity toward state-initiated conservation programs.

With regard to compensation for livestock losses, thereport suggests that authorities should “discourage the

illegal

killing of tigers which prey on livestock, by offer-ing compensation and encouraging better livestock pro-tection” (p. 23, emphasis added). The report fails to ad-dress the fact that both villagers and government officialsabuse current compensation systems and that there is anurgent need for simplifying the process by which vic-tims apply for and receive monetary compensation. Moreimportantly, there is no reference to compensation forhuman fatalities resulting from tiger attacks, which annu-ally run into the hundreds. Within the Indian state of WestBengal alone, a minimum of 189 tiger attacks on humanstook place during the 5–year period from 1979–1984(Kothari et al. 1989). The report states simply that themeans be developed “... to quickly identify, isolate, andremove, either through capture or killing problem tigersthat become habitual man-eaters” (p. 23). Two lines in a24-page report refer to one of the most basic causes oflocal animosity toward tiger conservation.

In stark contrast, following the recent deaths of twopersons by mountain lion attacks, Californians in 1996voted on whether or not the current ban on killingmountain lions should be lifted (the ban was not re-

pealed). Mountain lion attacks in California have re-sulted in 13 human fatalities during this century. Themountain lion is not as threatened as the tiger and Nor-chi and Bolze may not support the lifting of a ban onmountain lion hunting. But it is unlikely that any majorconservation group in the U.S. would suggest that largehuman populations be relocated from mountain lionhabitat or that human communities be called upon tobear the personal or material costs that villagers in thedeveloping countries are routinely expected to bear inthe effort to save endangered species. Where in thewestern world would the killing of an animal in defenseof life or property be characterized as “illegal”?

Significantly, village communities in India may, on thewhole, be more willing than western societies to live in ornext to forests that contain large carnivores (Katti 1995).Whether this is due to choice or a lack of alternatives isimmaterial. The fact remains that the Indian tiger has sur-vived, whereas the grey wolf (

Canis lupus

), subject tomuch lower pressures of human habitation, was virtuallyeliminated by the 1960s in the 48 contiguous United States(Mech 1995). What many residents within or adjoiningprotected areas in India cannot accept is that they aresuddenly perceived as the most significant threat to theforest and its wild mammal populations. Overnight, live-stock grazing within a new National Park constitutes acrime. And yet hordes of noisy tourists from Delhi, To-kyo, and Berlin have seemingly unlimited access to areasfrom which villagers are now excluded. Is it surprisingthat there is little local support for tiger conservation?

The great bulk of the report does not deal with thecomplicated question of generating local support for ti-ger conservation. Rather the primary focus is on im-proved legislation, better law enforcement, and the pro-visioning of guards with “... vehicles, arms, ammunition,wireless communications, binoculars, night vision de-vices, and other necessary equipment” (p. 18). Althoughsuch infrastructural support is clearly essential in dealingwith well armed, motorized poachers, it may be less suc-cessful in confronting tiger poisoning by irate villagers,as demonstrated in Dudhwa National Park in the 1980s.Such fortification will not achieve much if local animos-ity is channeled into the appropriate political move-ments. With the growing ease of arms procurement inthe Indian sub-continent, events such as the recent Bodotakeover of Manas Tiger Reserve in northeast India couldbecome increasingly common.

It is time to recognize that community participation inwildlife conservation is not about giving “priority ... tolocal and indigenous people when hiring field staff” (p.18). Doing so merely consigns local guards to the lowestand most abused rung in the conservation hierarchy. Itis also not simply about providing better schools andcivic amenities and other platforms for local “develop-ment.” It’s about moving policy-making from New Yorkand New Delhi into the villages and about finding some

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way of involving the villager, who is most closely associ-ated with, and affected by, the tiger.

My intent is not to romanticize local communities asintrinsically living in balance with nature or to suggestthat local institutions are necessarily more robust, moreequitable, or more effective than governmental agen-cies. A recent critique of community wildlife manage-ment in Africa points to the complexities and difficultiesassociated with such attempts at joint management (Gib-son & Marks 1995). Any initiative that aims to bring to-gether people representing different, and often opposinginterests, is a difficult task, but one that may be necessaryif conservation in developing countries is to succeed.Such an effort must be based on the building of site-spe-cific and enduring institutions representing real partner-ships between local communities and government agen-cies. At the heart of such a partnership must lie a sharingand a transference of power, such that local people havea political and economic stake in the resource itself.Whether or not we chose to change current power struc-tures will eventually influence our ability to save the ti-ger far more than the introduction of stricter laws, morefirepower, or better education for the locals.

Acknowledgments

I thank A. Agrawal, J. Gibbs, M. Katti, J. Mehta, N. Rai, N.Peluso, and R. Wallace for reactions to an earlier versionof this manuscript.

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