Can Tourism save the Tigers
Can Ecotourism Save India’s Tigers?
Sadly Dr Raghu Chundawat, one of India leading Tiger experts, told me last week that a Tiger Park which he was once credited with saving, was back on the brink of loosing all its remaining Tigers, but unlike Sariska National Park in Rajasthan, which last year was officially declared bereft of Tigers, this time Panna National Park was bereft of female tigers, and only males had been seen and tracked over the last two months. Is this then a ‘one way’ track to extinction for tigers in this park?
Worse that this is the fact that this park is in the hailed ‘Tiger State’ of Madhya Pradesh, part of central India with the greatest forest cover and the most likely state to still have Tigers roaming free when I have grandchildren – I hope!
Amazingly, and as all the charts show on the ‘ranges’ of individual tigers, the most health and densely populated regions for Tigers are infact the tourism zones within most of the so called Tiger parks in India. Yes, not the core zones, deliberately protected from those ghastly pushy camera clicking tourists and officially protected to ensure Tigers survive in perpetuity – but the very areas you and I can visit when we go tracking the world’s most favourite creature.
How extraordinary – so Tiger Tourism is proving to be the best way of saving Tigers? Yes – to a point!
Yet the Government and its Park officials and more recently a court judge, think it is better to restrict activities in Ranthambhore National Park for 2 days a week to ‘give the Tigers a break’ from tourism. Let’s just see if this doesn’t just mean that poachers, cattlemen and woodcutters get two extra days in which to ply their trade without the interference of tourists gawking around their forests. Quite simply; Poachers kill Tigers, woodcutters destroy habitat, tourism brings in revenue!
Indian wildlife is under unprecedented and unrelenting pressure, and tourism can and must do a whole lot better to save the tiger and its beautiful wilderness, but we must also be recognised as one of the tiger’s greatest ally in this a desperate fight for survival, both in the wild – and on the cover of our brochures.
Julian Matthews is Founding Chairman of a Campaign called ‘Travel Operators for Tigers’ which advocates and supports better tourism practices in India. Tour Operators and Agents can join the TOFT campaign. See www.toftigers.org or call 01285 643333 for details.
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