Forest fine, tigers not, say Satkosia villagers

What went wrong with the multi-crore tiger repopulation project in Odisha which desperately needs more big cats?
Published in Frontiers in Conservation Science, the study found that only 35 per cent respondents felt it was important to conserve tigers.
Published in Frontiers in Conservation Science, the study found that only 35 per cent respondents felt it was important to conserve tigers.

BHUBANESWAR: In last 48 years, Odisha has managed to create just two tiger reserves (TRs). Similipal was among the first TRs to be notified in the country when Project Tiger was launched in 1973. Satkosia came up only in 2007 but its spectacular collapse of tiger population in just a decade prompted the State Government to go in for India’s first inter-state tiger reintroduction programme in 2018. 

However, within months of the project going on stream, it hit the roadblocks and had to be suspended. Of a pair of tigers translocated from Madhya Pradesh, the male ended up in a poacher’s snare and the aggressive female Sundari, in the enclosure. Earlier in March, the tigress was sent back home.

What went wrong with the multi-crore tiger repopulation project in the State which desperately needs more big cats? There has been no or little post-mortem by the Government but a latest study finds new insights into local communities’ perspective towards the project which folded up after facing resistance from local villages.

Published in Frontiers in Conservation Science, the study found that only 35 per cent respondents felt it was important to conserve tigers. Women, interestingly, were more supportive than men, which was a departure from other sites.

The paper assessed people’s response towards tiger translocation to Satkosia and the main drivers behind it. As part of it, 1,932 households from 43 villages located in and around the TR were interviewed.

Forest fine, tigers not, say Satkosia villagers

Researchers from Wildlife Institute of India, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Berhampur, University of British Columbia, Vancouver and officers of Satkosia TR conducted the study which analysed attitude of people towards conservation in general and tiger in particular so that a future strategy to revive tiger population could be devised.

Interestingly, at least 91 per cent of the respondents felt forest conservation was important while 71 per cent were in favour of wildlife conservation. But when it came to tigers, the support went down sharply. Though over 70 per cent favoured importance of forest and wildlife conservation, only 29.5 per cent thought wildlife and tiger conservation were important. Similarly, a little above 28 per cent respondents expressed importance of conservation for all three.

Social-economic conditions, ecosystem values and resources, fear, loss and relationship with Forest Department were assessed as influencing variables in the study. Women, interestingly, were found to be more supportive of tiger conservation. “The attitude of people was found to differ by gender where women are more supportive of tiger conservation as compared to men, which is contrary to other sites where women are more apprehensive of tiger,” the paper said. 

Since the project did not assess the social acceptance of local community before the translocation, after human deaths, attacks on domestic animals, the support for tiger conservation was evidently low. 

Authors of the study Vaishali Vasudeva, Rabi Sankar Pal, Gatikrishna Behera, Ramesh Krishnamurthy, Pitchai Ramasamy and Pradeep Raj Karat observed that “long absence of interaction of people with large carnivores” also made tiger appear as a “problem animal”.

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