Re: Dr. Pabla's articles on conservation
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2012 4:16 pm
Good one thanks for sharing
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More visibility of wild animals is not a criteria of increasing population. It could also mean forest are increasingly becoming degraded (which surely is the case) and not suitable for habitation any more. Indian wilderness suffers terribly from habitat fragmentation and destruction, hence animals venture out, like in the case of blackbuck, leopard or elephant. So, would you kill them for no fault of there own ? Where there is healthy, contiguous forest area, man animal conflict is minimal, but where it is the reverse, it is worse.how is this misleading? Dont you see the monkeys that are marauding our cities?
The hunting permit mechanism to promote conservation of wildlife works this way.. As you would know, leaving the job of conservation of Forests and Wildlife in the hands of Government officials and a few individuals and NGO's has not worked in India. Period! It's a question of who will police the police?. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" as the saying goes.. NGO's are controlled by the MOEF and they usually have to 'shape up or ship out' when it comes to saying anything that goes against the diktats of MOEF. As I see it, Forest officials all over India have a 'wink wink nudge nudge' or 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' symbiotic relationship with politicians and unscruplous businessmen to 'Harvest the bounty of our forests be it in the form of forest produce like timber, bamboo, medicinal herbs, etc.. I remember having read somewhere that some forest officials have alledgely been involved with poaching of the Tiger itself. Bringing in private individuals who are sports hunters into this hitherto cozy symbiotic relationship of officials and business men could if done properly throw a spanner in the works of forest officials. Individual sports hunters who have hitherto been dishonourably debarred from the indian conservation game-plan would be charged heavily to persue their sports (in a manner that is sustainable) Such individuals who could afford to persue such a sport in India would most necessarily be rich, literate and aware of his surroundings. He could very well turnout to be the crucial (missing) stake holder in the conservation scenario of India. As they would be directly taxed, they would be the first persons to realize what is going on in the forests and ask the officials "Where is the trophy that I have paid for?"
I had recently commented on a post by a famous indian conservator on facebook I quote : "Actually there is a way, but we are too thick headed to recognize it. Instead of trying to uplift wildlife conservation onto a pedestal and turn it into some kind of unatainable 'Nirvana' we should bring it down to the masses in a way they understand and can relate with. If done correctly they can even profit from it. Dr. HS Pabla in his paper 'Use it or Loose it : THE MANTRA FOR MAN-ANIMAL CO-EXISTENCE’ seems to have hit the nail with practical answers to our problems but Indian conservators wont touch it with a barge pole.. Why?? Is it because we want to put Wildlife Conservation up there on a 'high pedestal' like some kind of sanctimonius religious zealot?"
You want to put conservaton up there like some kind of a religion and follow it piously like a devotee. It dosent work that way! Conservation is nothing without humans and although it feels very selfish, it IS solely for the benifit of man. If it benefits conservation in the longrun by allowing man to benefit directly in the short run in a way that is sustainable, why get so upset about it. I truely believe this is where india has gone wrong.. treating conservation like a religion. Ahimsa and all that...
You are talking about an animal which is just 400 in number. We want to increase there number not control it. Moving the excess population to other habitats is a better idea.The animals not dying natural deaths, they are dying because of poaching, poisoning and in fighting caused due to the shortage of space and over population.
If we move to licensed hunting, we will be generating more Jobs, specially for the villagers and we know for sure, they know forest and conservation more than people sitting in AC rooms and talking about it.
The 'ample resource' could come from licensed and controlled hunting. Once you have licensed hunting, illegal hunting (poaching) will just go away. This is because poachers cannot just go to any jungle and shoot an animal. They have to have a local guide who knows the jungle like the back of his hand. This local guide is usually just a local villager who frequents the forests or maybe even lives in it. He may not even get paid by the poachers! Legal hunting will put money and sometimes meat in the hands of these forest dwellers (call them tribals if you will) and illegal hunting will be a thing of the past.Between i am not a treehugger or some NGO worker, i am all for sustainable exploitation of resources but for this you should have ample resource which we dont have. First stop illegal hunting of animals before thinking about legal hunting. Both illegal as well as legal hunting will be final nail in the coffin for the wildlife.
Surely u dont know poachers modus operandi. The majority of tiger poachers in India, the mogiyas, bawarias, baheliyas and pardis are expert animal trackers and before setting up traps they stay in the forest for several days just to understand the terrain. They rarely rely on locals especially near any famous tiger reserve becoz local are ought to inform the FD. But lets not talk about tigers, becoz legalise tiger hunting is out of question becoz i guess tiger or any other large carnivore is just too royal to be killed like that. It will be an insult to our national animal to be even considered for hunting.The 'ample resource' could come from licensed and controlled hunting. Once you have licensed hunting, illegal hunting (poaching) will just go away. This is because poachers cannot just go to any jungle and shoot an animal. They have to have a local guide who knows the jungle like the back of his hand. This local guide is usually just a local villager who frequents the forests or maybe even lives in it. He may not even get paid by the poachers! Legal hunting will put money and sometimes meat in the hands of these forest dwellers (call them tribals if you will) and illegal hunting will be a thing of the past.
Legalization of hunting can only be done if there is sufficient game as well as total curb on poaching. A thorough scientific study should be undertaken. Hunting can never be conservation tool. It could control population of a species in certain place but doesn't help in conservation of a species. Thats why i said capacity building of a habitat should be there. In an era where we are talking about inviolate zone for tiger conservation, you just can not let some trigger happy people to enter such inviolate zone. Such inviolate zone are not entirely restricted to tiger reserves. Tiger is a highly mobile animal it travel large swathe of forest to find suitable habitat. U can not restrict tiger to one forest and carry out "legalised" hunting somewhere else which could be developed as potential tiger habitat. Thats why i am not a fan of Mr. Pabla, becoz his approach towards forest is more of exploitation rather then conservation. His action and reaction during tiger crisis in Panna is not somethin to be proud of, read more about Dr. ullas karanth, Dr. krithi karanth, they are eminent wildlife biologist and have done extensive research on hunting practise in india. I guess this is necessary to build a proper mindset on this topic.Legalization of hunting can be done if there is sufficient game in the said reserve,and if not can breed these animal's on farms and then let them in to the forests I feel is no rocket science can easily be done if there is an organised involvement of the forest dept and the local populace..also the employment factror will play an important role and if the locals are involved in this they will most cetainly protect thier source of income.If it becomes a reality I am sure it will be a game changer i.e poachers will have a hard time due to increase in the number of forest guards,guides etc..
However this is my personal point of view.
shashankspectral, Why do you want to save the Tiger? Thats the same question a villager here in Mizoram asked me.. "They take away the cattle, scare us half to death on our way to our farms and are a total nusiance for us humans" But you and I know that its all about preservation of natural ecological balance and preservation of the 'food chain' If any animal from this natural food chain is removed from the ecology, it gets 'imbalanced' Thus eventually leading to the destrucion of all the animals. For the tiger to survive naturally we need the sambar to survive, for the sambar to survive we need the forest vegetation to survive and so on and so forth. Sometimes we forget that this natural 'food chain' and ecological balance includes us humans! The tiger may be the highest ranking carnivore in the Natural Forest, but we cannot isolate a particular foodchain and hope for it to flourish naturally without including us humans as another participant in the food chain web.shashankspectral wrote:Legalization of hunting can only be done if there is sufficient game as well as total curb on poaching. A thorough scientific study should be undertaken. Hunting can never be conservation tool. It could control population of a species in certain place but doesn't help in conservation of a species. Thats why i said capacity building of a habitat should be there. In an era where we are talking about inviolate zone for tiger conservation, you just can not let some trigger happy people to enter such inviolate zone. Such inviolate zone are not entirely restricted to tiger reserves. Tiger is a highly mobile animal it travel large swathe of forest to find suitable habitat. U can not restrict tiger to one forest and carry out "legalised" hunting somewhere else which could be developed as potential tiger habitat. Thats why i am not a fan of Mr. Pabla, becoz his approach towards forest is more of exploitation rather then conservation. His action and reaction during tiger crisis in Panna is not somethin to be proud of, read more about Dr. ullas karanth, Dr. krithi karanth, they are eminent wildlife biologist and have done extensive research on hunting practise in india. I guess this is necessary to build a proper mindset on this topic.Legalization of hunting can be done if there is sufficient game in the said reserve,and if not can breed these animal's on farms and then let them in to the forests I feel is no rocket science can easily be done if there is an organised involvement of the forest dept and the local populace..also the employment factror will play an important role and if the locals are involved in this they will most cetainly protect thier source of income.If it becomes a reality I am sure it will be a game changer i.e poachers will have a hard time due to increase in the number of forest guards,guides etc..
However this is my personal point of view.
shashankspectral, Why do you want to save the Tiger? Thats the same question a villager here in Mizoram asked me.. "They take away the cattle, scare us half to death on our way to our farms and are a total nusiance for us humans" But you and I know that its all about preservation of natural ecological balance and preservation of the 'food chain' If any animal from this natural food chain is removed from the ecology, it gets 'imbalanced' Thus eventually leading to the destrucion of all the animals. For the tiger to survive naturally we need the sambar to survive, for the sambar to survive we need the forest vegetation to survive and so on and so forth. Sometimes we forget that this natural 'food chain' and ecological balance includes us humans! The tiger may be the highest ranking carnivore in the Natural Forest, but we cannot isolate a particular foodchain and hope for it to flourish naturally without including us humans as another participant in the food chain web.
As an 'insider' Dr. Pabla seems to have immense working experience of the forest department and its officials, their capabilities, their limitations, their masters (politicians) and their partners. He seems to know that the current Indian system of 'going with the flow' with intermittent stop gap measures taken to 'patchup' disasters which crop up once in a while isnt going to do anything meaningful in the longrun to curtail the immense pressures put up by man to harvest the riches of the forests.
As he has commented and experienced, all we have to do is step back and see that our present high handed system which is blind to the demands of humans on nature isnt working while systems adopted by the United States and other nations which have adopted a 'middle of the road' system which encompasses human participation has been immensely successful in conservation. Scientists are scientists and will do their experiments in isolation. They come up with a solution to a problem in isolation which results in the cropping up of a thousand other problems! One has to understand nature and human nature and come up with an answer to our problems. Also Dr. Pabla has never proposed a free for all 'open hunting season'
Wrong! USA and SA jumped into the conservaton band wagon at about the same time India did! But india wanted to show the world that it could come up with a better conservation initiative and came up with exemplary legislation that sought to ban hunting altogether and look where it got us. No you still wont believe that our present system has failed all together would you?? Go for it, support your scientific studies, meanwhile the poachers and tribals who believe that the government is out to take away their only source of livelyhood forever will continue to pillage and plunder what all they can get while it lasts.Countires like SA, USA had sound wildlife management policy for ages, so they can actually afford to allow hunting, can we in present situation is the question.
Thats just it! Without any rhyme or reason you just don't want to loose the tiger whatever the cost.. Right? This is not a good enough reason for the tribals and villagers who are face to face with the Tigers and Sambhars every day of their life. They want the Sambhar, they want the tigers as long as harm does not befall them and they can profit from it. The way they see it, if anyone benefits from the forests and animals, they should! And not some city dwelling high handed forest official who signs them off to some logger at his whim.i dont want to loose an intimate part of indian natural history, i think no one wants too. And no we are not part of this food chain but rather we own and control this food chain. Do you think human population will decimate if the forest or tigers or sambhar are gone ?
How can you increase the number when the number existing is dying due to infighting. Secondly in order to increase the number, you need larger area, which is very clear from the fact that the current land allocation is not sufficient.shashankspectral wrote:You are talking about an animal which is just 400 in number. We want to increase there number not control it. Moving the excess population to other habitats is a better idea.The animals not dying natural deaths, they are dying because of poaching, poisoning and in fighting caused due to the shortage of space and over population.
If we move to licensed hunting, we will be generating more Jobs, specially for the villagers and we know for sure, they know forest and conservation more than people sitting in AC rooms and talking about it.
Even if we allow licensed hunting i am pretty sure some adventure tourism ventures will hijack it, just like with wildlife tourism.