Despite a recent upward trend in tiger populations in India, the tiger remains on the endangered species list. Saving the tiger, therefore, is not a fait accompli but a continuous struggle that must be informed by scientific monitoring and analysis.

Following Global Tiger Day on 29 July, Ideas for India will host a three-part series, anchored by Parikshit Ghosh, bringing together experts to discuss the challenges of tiger conservation, from human-animal conflict, to the unique ecosystem of various habitats and climate-induced threats.

It was a bright winter morning in Corbett National Park and our safari jeep had just ambled its way into the chaur surrounding the forest rest house at Dhikala. Following the animated gestures coming from passengers of another vehicle parked just ahead, I spotted him crouching in the tall grass. Rather, I saw two black ears adorned with tufts of white, sticking out from a sea of golden yellow stalks. Ten minutes passed as we switched off the engine and held our breath.

Then he suddenly sat up straight – a large male with an orange coat glistening in the morning sun – and looked at our jeep. Actually, he looked straight through us gawking humans at the wide expanse of grassland that lay behind, searching for signs of breakfast.  It was a relief to realise we weren’t on the menu.

Members of a species that has colonised every corner of this planet regularly spend large sums and travel hundreds of miles to catch a glimpse of a creature which numbers only a few thousands in the wild, restricted mainly to shrinking pockets in South and East Asia. Big cats permeate our literature and folklore, inhabit our religious imagination, lend themselves to our national symbols and aspirations, and inspire fear, awe, and admiration in one and all.

This apex predator, chiselled by millions of years of evolution, adaptive enough to thrive in habitats ranging from the Siberian tundra to the dry, deciduous forests of western India to the tidal swamps of the Gangetic delta, is nevertheless on the brink of extinction. The tiger’s historical habitat stretched from the Caspian Sea to Japan; even a century ago, there may have been as many as 100,000 tigers roaming our forests. Habitat destruction, trophy hunting, medicinal harvesting, human-animal conflict, and poaching have brought it down to a few percent of that.

Notwithstanding lurid tales of the tiger’s lust for human blood, their supreme indifference to us is quite palpable to anyone who has been fortunate enough to have sighted one in the wild, as I did on that winter morning in Corbett NP. About sixty people are killed by tigers in India each year, while 150,000 die of road accidents and 50,000 or more due to snake bites. The tiger, on the other hand, lives under our piercing gaze and, more consequentially, our fatal encroachment.

Every tale has its twists, and the story of the tiger’s near decimation during the 20^th century finds its own course change in the passing of the Wild Life (Protection) Act of 1972 and the launch of Project Tiger in 1973. We now have a legal and administrative framework, with oversight from the National Tiger Conservation Authority, to protect our national animal. There have been setbacks along the way – the tiger census figures of 2007 sent alarm bells ringing, as did reported disappearance from Sariska and Panna reserves, but more recent counts show an upward trend in tiger populations in India.

Limited victories notwithstanding, the tiger remains justifiably on the critically endangered species list. Populations are small and isolated, teetering on the brink of critical mass and limited genetic diversity. An expanding human footprint is always a looming threat to their protected bubbles. Saving the tiger is not a fait accompli but a continuous struggle that must be informed by scientific monitoring and analysis.

On the occasion of Global Tiger Day (29 July), we asked some experts to share their thoughts on the challenges of tiger conservation in India. Their insights will appear in a series of three articles throughout this week.

In his post, Pranav Chanchani describes how tiger population densities show wide variation across various habitats. For our conservation efforts to be more effective, we need to develop a deeper understanding of the ecological and social factors that underlie this variation. He is critical of the notion that to thrive, tigers must be scrupulously quarantined from local populations.

Two posts examine the tiger’s past and future in its only mangrove habitat, the Sunderbans. In one, Bappaditya Mukhopadhyay and Anamitra Anurag Danda explain how human-animal conflict in the Sunderbans is a product of its unique eco-system, how conservation efforts have achieved some success by paying attention to local features, but how its positioning at the forefront of climate-induced threats (intensifying storms and rising sea levels) makes the future bleak. In the other, Danda argues that the existing policy framework will not save the Sunderbans tiger from extinction. A project of river rejuvenation through intergovernmental cooperation is the only way out.

The tiger’s peril is but a metaphor for our broader engagement with nature, and how we have pursued a path to prosperity with too little regard for the environment. The receding glaciers of the Himalayas, the toxic air pollution that chokes our cities, the falling water tables caused by runaway agriculture, the loss of mangroves that protect against intensifying storms, are all symptoms of a common malaise.

There is an instrumental, self-interested reason for us to arrest the sixth mass extinction that is underway across the globe. For example, recent research has shown that the collapse of the vulture population in India, attributed to the presence of an anti-inflammatory drug in cattle carcasses, is responsible for half a million excess human deaths in five years, as vultures served a useful function by cleaning up carcasses and checking threats like river pollution and proliferation of feral dogs.

Beyond enlightened self-interest, however, lurks a deeper ethical question. What is our obligation, if any, to other species that share this planet with us? Species that have fascinated us, triggered our imagination and spirituality, shaped our mythology and culture. Isn’t losing them losing part of us? In an inversion of Blake’s imagery, today the tiger looks more like the lamb, and we more like the tiger iin our “fearful symmetry”.

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