Sariska sets its natives on tiger’s trail
Local youth have been hired as trackers in Sariska tiger reserve that now has 28 tigers. In 2004, it lost its entire Royal Bengal population due to poaching.
As the sun was about to call it a day, an eager anticipation gripped the senses. It was reflected in the immediate jungle surroundings. Two peacocks cawed shrilly.
Inside the Sariska National Park and Tiger Reserve in Alwar district of Rajasthan, about 200km from Delhi, two men surveyed the craggy landscape covered with scrubby arid vegetation that makes up the 1,213 square km park area – home to 28 Royal Bengal tigers, many leopards, hyenas, jungle cats, deer, pigs, crocodiles, and innumerable species of resident birds.
Tiger trackers Mukesh Kumar Balai and Kaluram Gujar are tiger trackers and they trained their eyes towards a rocky cliff from the tonneau of a Bolero Camper, the height giving them a notional advantage against a top predator in the wild.
“It is past 6:30 pm. Any moment ST-21 (a tag number for a particular tiger) will descend and make for the road. It did the same yesterday after quenching his thirst at the water source amidst the rocks above,” Balai said.
A resident of Indok village in Alwar, Balai learned to track tigers – the masters of camouflage – while working for the Wildlife Institute of India.
ST-21 is a handsome hunk born in Sariska and Balai has been trailing the “prince” since his birth in 2018. In the fading light, a tail appeared and then the full glory of stripes. He bounded down the hill, walked in front of the pickup and vanished into the forest. A long wait ended within minutes.
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Next stop: ST-9, the queen of Sariska. The Bolero winded through a forest track as Balai and Gujar followed the pawprints of the 11-year-old female, but she proved to be elusive this evening.
Earlier in the morning, Sariska deputy director DP Jagawat said the young male and the tigress were often spotted – by forest officials, tourists, and villagers alike.
Harnessing native knowledge
These days, tiger sightings in Sariska are especially fulfilling as the park had endured a lot in the past decades.
It lost all its tigers in 2004-2005 and the current population of 28, including six cubs and eight males, is the result of a successful reintroduction programme with the help of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Wildlife Institute of India.
In 2008, ST-1 and ST-2 were brought from Ranthambore, 166km south of Sariska, after rampant poaching wiped out the park’s entire tiger population.
Sariska presents unique conservation challenges. Of the 29 villages in the core, five have been relocated and six are in the process.
As india’s national parks and reserves have human settlements inside them, relocation is often an issue. Either locals do not receive adequate compensation or they do not want to leave behind a land that has nurtured them for years even though it is now plagued by the lack of power and mobile connectivity.
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In these wild places, however, local participation is desirable for conservation efforts to succeed.
There are remnants of abandoned villages, and one of them is Haripura. Most of its inhabitants were relocated to Tijara, 90km away. “Locals are either offered Rs 1 lakh cash package or 1.5 hectares of land as part of rehabilitation,” Jagawat said.
Harnessing native knowledge
Forest officials and conservationists are now building their plans around the villagers who know the topography like the back of their hands. A programme was launched by explaining to villagers that saving the tiger would help them earn more through the tourism economy.
The Sariska management hired locals to keep an eye on tigers at a fixed pay of Rs 12,000 a month. The ICICI Foundation is assisting in the project. The trackers are given torches, shoes and T-shirts.
Forest department staff are transferred, but the local youths are always there. They know the jungle deeply
“Forest department staff are transferred, but the local youths are always there. They know the jungle deeply,” said ranger Jitendra Singh Chaudhary. The youths are happy to score a job because “their families are either into farming or rearing livestock”, he said.
According to Jagawat, more will be hired if and when the tiger numbers swell.
Tracker Kaluram Gujar’s family once lived in Haripura. After relocation, his family received land. For work, he prefers to stay in a forest chowki in Sariska. He earlier worked with Wildlife Institute of India, in attaching camera traps are unparalleled.
Gujar’s young colleague Kaluram Awana reported in an olive T-shirt and jungle trousers at a karnakawas chowki or check post. The man in his late 20s is from Thanagazi, a village in the core zone. He is among 27 trackers in Sariska.
“Encounters happen. A year back, a youth was injured in a leopard attack. He received compensation,” said Awana, who covers 25km every day, but is apprehensive of facing a tiger. His advice is to slow down the bike and allow the animal to pass.
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A tracking team comprises an in-charge from the forest department and a local tracker. They scour an assigned zone on bikes and constantly keep in touch with others on walkie-talkies and a mobile app. Each sighting and pugmark are logged into a data sheet.
By the end of June, the monsoon rains start to fall, signalling the difficulty in tiger sightings for weeks. Tracker Kalu Gujar said: “We have to look in the hills. We walk to places where bikes cannot go. But we have to find them anyway.”
The lead image at the top shows a tiger spotted in Sariska National Park, Rajasthan (Photo by Forest dept. of Rajasthan)
Deepanwita is a journalist based in New Delhi. An alumna of Asian College of Journalism, she writes about rural development, gender and climate change.
