A Management Effectiveness Evaluation (MEE) of the functioning of India’s 39 tiger reserves has come down heavily on India’s premier Corbett Tiger Reserve (TR), which due to its high-profile nature should have set a benchmark for tiger conservation.
Instead, the MEE points out that the human-wildlife conflict in the buffer zone of this reserve has intensified while the critical corridors in which animals move have become increasingly fragmented.
The MEE stresses that “too much time and manpower is involved in managing tourism and tourist facilities which takes away the focus from the primary task of the Corbett reserve”.
But this seems to be a problem across all reserves. The Bandavgarh TR is having to cope with one lakh tourists per annum from 2008. A large number of resorts have come up around the reserve resulting in increasing human-wildlife conflict and preventing tiger dispersal opportunities.
The Ranthambore TR, comprising largely of a habitat island, faces a similar problem both in tourism excess and man-wildlife conflict.
Other reserves such as the Dudha Tiger Reserve located next to the porous international border with Nepal faces the problem of poaching and wildlife trade. The Panna TR had been left with a defunct tiger population populated as it is with Pardhis, a tribe carrying powerful firearms and known for their poaching activities.
Problems of mining are putting habitats under pressure especially in the Sahayadri TR and the Tadoba-Andhari TR.
Other problems include a failure to protect rare animals. The Satkosia reserve has failed to save the gharial in its only non-Himalayan river system. It has just three gharials left even though this is the place where the Indian crocodile project was initiated. The Udanti-Sitanadi reserve has failed to protect the Asiatic wild buffalo whose population is down to eight from which four have been kept in connectivity.