Eight tigers dying in the first five months of this year in Uttarakhand has set the alarm bells ringing. The total tiger fatalities this year are likely to be higher than the last year when 11 tiger deaths were recorded in the hill state.

Three tigers found dead under mysterious circumstances in the renowned Corbett tiger reserve and its adjoining areas just in the last one week is particularly worrisome. Preliminary investigations have indicated that the deaths were not due to natural causes. Since the bodies of the dead animals were found intact, poaching as the motive behind the killings is also ruled out.

Mutilated body of one tiger was found inside the reserve on June 1 while the carcasses of two tigers were recovered from the area under the Tarai West Forest Division on May 27 and May 29.

According to the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) data, 24 tiger deaths were reported in Uttarakhand in 2011, 11 deaths in 2012, and eight deaths so far this year.

WPSI state in-charge Rajendra Agrawal told The Pioneer that the Forest department’s intelligence system is ineffective and the department appears uninterested in improving wildlife security. “An alarming proportion of the tiger deaths are results of revenge killings by either villagers or Van Gujjars but the authorities have failed to check this,” he said.

If tigers do not have enough prey (due to hunting of prey species by people or poor quality habitat), they will instead hunt domestic livestock – which many local communities depend on for their livelihood. In retaliation tigers are often killed, in an effort to prevent similar events happening in the future. These are called revenge killings.

The national tiger conservation authority had earlier this year framed a set of standard operating procedures (SOPs) on man-tiger conflicts, specifying that a tiger that may have strayed into human habitation must be guided back, and if necessary, immobilised and radio-collared. The SOPs call on the district administration to ensure that affected people do not attempt to poison the animal.

Now who are Van Gujjars?

Van Gujjars are a pastoral nomadic community of the Himalayas. Unlike the Gujjars of Rajasthan, who are Hindus, Van Gujjars are Muslims.

The Van Gujjars, numbering over 25,000 according to estimates by NGOs, resided in the Shivalik mountain range near the Jim Corbett National Park for over a century. Their caravans moving from the Doon Valley to the higher areas of the Himalayas in search of forest patches with their cattle in summer made for a curious sight to the people of the hills. Their food was mostly honey and fruits collected from the forests and the milk from their cattle.

More than 183 Van Gujjar families were forced out from their homes under Corbett National Park and Rajaji National park after these areas were classified as ecologically-sensitive zones on a supreme court directive in the mid-nineties. The ousted Van Gujjars were given government land near Haridwar and told to give up their forest life on suspicion that they were colluding with poachers to kill tigers.

However, when the central government, in 2010, approved the setting up of the Corbett tiger force, it asked forest officials to use the Van Gujjars’ knowledge of the forests effectively as they are familiar with the 520 sqkm Corbett park. They were granted 30 percent reservation in a new tiger protection force that was set up to check poaching in the Corbett reserve.

Many more Van Gujjar families still reside in the buffer zone of the reserve.

With the onset of summer every year, a number of Van Gujjars from up north move in with buffaloes to join their brethren inside the reserve and make the best use of the Ramganga reservoir which flows through the Corbett tiger reserve. With this, fresh herds of abandoned cows also move in towards the core area of the reserve, lure more tigers and trigger more revenge killings. This is an annual feature.

On March 14 this year, the Uttarakhand high court sought an explanation from the state government regarding the number of Van Gujjars living in protected forest areas and aspects related to their rehabilitation. Former vice-chairman of state forest and environment advisory committee Anil Baluni had filed a public interest litigation in the high court eliciting focus on the growing involvement of some members of the Van Gujjar community in poaching and other wildlife crimes.

It is estimated that about 700 Van Gujjar families are living in protected forest areas across the state, including inside the Corbett and Rajaji national parks. Members of the community have taken over the best water and fodder resources, which is creating problems for the wildlife.

Earlier this year, the Rajaji authorities had nabbed two Van Gujjar brothers who had confessed to poisoning a tiger found dead earlier this year in the Gohri range of the national park. The brothers had said that they had poisoned the big cat because it had attacked and killed their buffaloes.
This yearly crisis of tigers falling prey to revenge killings in summers can be averted if the park management implements a longstanding plan for relocating Gujjar families outside Corbett. But then, it has been many years that it has been talked about and left just at that.