If you've been following this blog for a while, you will know that India is a subject I write about a lot. I've had an interest in the country since I was three years old, having watched documentaries about its wildlife on television, and six years ago I got to visit India in person and visit some of its national parks. I visited Kanha and Bandhavgarh National Park in Madhya Pradesh, and while the former in particular was a dream destination for me, there was one park I had hoped to visit maybe on a return journey; Kaziranga.
It seems Kaziranga has been thrust into the spotlight in recent years. Situated on the banks of the Brahmaputra in Assam, India's most easterly state, it has become a conservation success story due to its efforts to preserve the Indian rhinoceros. It has since become even more famous due to visits from the British Royal family and as being one of the locations featured in David Attenborough's Planet Earth II. But now Kaziranga National Park seems to be in the news for other, more worrying reasons. The other day, while finishing my last post, I stumbled upon a BBC News article by Justin Rowlatt detailing the current situation between the forest department which manages Kaziranga and the local people who live on the edge of the park.
In the last couple of years forest guards have been given extraordinary powers to shoot and kill anyone inside the park who they suspect to be involved in poaching. For many years the forest guards have been involved in a long-term battle against poaching gangs, but the BBC reported that while the number of rhinos killed in the last few years has decreased, the number of people shot by the park guards has reached fifty. Compare this to two people prosecuted for poaching in the last three years and only one forest guard killed by poachers in the past twenty years, it seems there is something amiss with Kaziranga's conservation methods. Add to this allegations of torture by the forest department and evictions of villages along the park border and we have ourselves a truly convoluted situation.
So what can I offer to the discussion? I have spoken about the blight of poaching in some of my poetry, most strongly in 'Ghosts of Sariska' which was my attempt to deal with the Sariska Tiger Reserve poaching scandal in poetic form. It was a case in which an entire population of tigers were killed of by poachers due to a combination of poor management and outdated protection methods. That was in 2005, and India has redoubled its conservation efforts since then. According to the BBC article, this new policy which allows park guards to shoot potential poachers came into force following a recommendation after the number of rhinos lost to poachers more than doubled in 2013. However, this leads to cases where local people with no connection to poaching gangs are getting caught in the crossfire, and this is where conservation crosses the line.
I'm all for increased security to protect endangered species from poachers. It has been proved in other cases such as the Sariska scandal that local people often work with poaching gangs due to the high financial gains involved in trading rhino horns and tiger skins. But shooting and killing people indiscriminately, like something out of a Judge Dredd comic, sends entirely the wrong signal to those communities who can aid the Assam Forest Department's efforts. India has a long history of coexistence with the natural world, and these tribal communities who have lived in the forest for centuries are in an ideal place to aid conservation efforts.
That's not to say that humans and animals should be made to share the same space. The establishment of twenty eight Project Tiger reserves in the 1970s involved the relocation of people and villages, which led to a comeback for tigers in the wild. Nevertheless, the expansion of Kaziranga has turned into a human rights issue, with entire villages being evicted and then demolished, leading to clashes between local people and the police. Also due to the fact that the forest guards are protected from prosecution if they kill someone, it seems as if local people have the cards stacked firmly against them.
I won't pretend to have the answers for this situation. On the one hand it's great to see conservation in India strengthening but disheartening to see such brutal methods being employed. Somehow a balance needs to be struck between the needs of people and animals while still maintaining a firm line against poachers. The comeback of endangered species such as the Indian rhino is a triumph of conservation, but when compared with the human cost it seems that a revaluation of the way forward is desperately needed.
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