ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS PROJECT

PROJECT TIGER INDIAN PERSPECTIVE ANALYSIS

NAME : S.VINEETH

CLASS : B.A.,B.L(HONS) IV YEAR- B

REG.NO : H13116

DATE OF SUBMISSION :

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SNO TOPIC PAGE
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1 INTRODUCTION

2 TIGER- TRIVIAL FACTS

3 PROJECT TIGER REASON FOR ITS LAUNCH

4 OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT

5 PROJECT TIGER AND MONEY TRIAL

6 HIGHLIGHTS OF THE PROJECT

7 RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION

8 REFERENCES

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INTRODUCTION:

The Indian tiger (Panthera tigris) has been the centre of attraction in the
Indian jungles, as a big fame, during the last two centuries. Apart from Maharajas
and Nawabs who had interest in hunting of tigers, the British officers, soldiers and
civil officers were all keen on bagging at least one tiger before they retired. A few
of them attempted to score a century of tiger heads and succeeded. Some even
repeated the performance as many as 10 times, thus massacring over a thousand
tigers in their life times. Hunting tigers was a free style sport. Some of the States
had launched tiger eradication campaigns and pushed the tiger to the wall. But
nothing had been so serious as the large scale destruction of the tiger habitat due to
urbanisation, industrialisation and population pressure, as well as the market in
tiger skins for export. The extraordinary high price of the pelt attracted poachers
and the tiger started losing ground and losing it fast. The cumulative result of all
these adverse factors is that the tiger is now in danger of extinction, and the latest
census has revealed less than 1,900 of these magnificent animals in the entire
country.1

TIGER-TRIVIAL FACTS:

The geographical distribution of tigers spans large parts of Asia,

although it has greatly reduced in the last 50 years. Tigers are still found in a wide
variety of forests, including drydeciduous, moist-deciduous, evergreen, riverine,
and mangrove. Tigers are fast and early breeders. The gestation period in tigers is
as short as 103 days under favourable conditions. Demographic parameters show
that females start breeding at a mean age of 3.4 years and the litter size is usually
three . Further, the inter-birth interval could be as short as 20 months . This reflects

1
Task Force, Indian Board for Wild Life. 1972. Project Tiger: A Proposal for Preservation of the Tiger (Panthera
tigris tigris Linn.) in India. New Delhi:, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India

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favourable reproductive attributes of the tiger. The survival rate among the cubs is
also high if litters are large. With an intact habitat and prey population, tigers can
easily recover from loss of population and this has been the key to the success of
the tiger conservation programmes around the world. Tigers unlike lions do not
live in families. They are largely individualistic and usually move around on their
own. Although not much is known of their dispersal capabilities, it has been found
that males disperse three times farther than females . While the males disperse over
33km, females have an average dispersal of less than 10 km . Indeed, male tigers
control stretches ranging from 200km in thick forests to nearly five times in dry
and arid regions. Dispersal is male-biased among mammals and they usually have
a higher mortality. Although, the females are integral to reproductive success, the
sex that is more vulnerable to extinction determines the probability of extinction of
the species in a given subpopulation. The male tiger is more susceptible to dying
before reaching breeding age than the female tiger . An average adult tiger must
kill about 45 to 50 deer sized prey animals every year to survive. A tigress raising
three cubs requires as many as 60 to 70 animals a year. Thus, the survival of a tiger
population requires a large ungulate population that mainly consists of herbivores
such as deer, sambar, muntjac, wild boar, etc.

PROJECT TIGER- REASON FOR ITS LAUNCH2:

There were an estimated 40,000 tigers in India at the beginning of the

twentieth century. This number had continually decline with the hunting of tigers
in the absence of any legal restraint. The gravity of the situation was realised when
the first all-India tiger census in 1972 revealed only 1827 tigers in India. It was
then when the government of India realised the gravity of the situation. The

2
Project Tiger. 2005. Past, Present and FuturE. New Delhi: Project Tiger, Ministry of Environment and Forests,
Government of India. http://projecttiger.nic.in/past.htm.

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Government reacted to the situation by imposing a ban in 1970 on the killing of
tigers. Hitherto, there existed only the Indian Forest Act of 1927. It brought forests
and wildlife under the concurrent list in 1976. The Government further enacted the
Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. A Task Force3 was also formed to solve the
problem of the declining tiger population. The Project had been drawn to cover a
six-year period from April 1, 1973 to March 31, 1979, thus covering the last year
of the Fourth Plan and the entire Fifth Five Year Plan. The total projected fund
requirement was Rs 58 million. The Central Government was responsible for
planning, coordination and part financing while the State Government was
responsible for only execution and financing a part of the recurring cost of the
project. The various reasons that were responsible for the fall in tiger population in
India were: Shrinkage of tiger land Excessive disturbance in tiger habitat
Destruction of prey animals Poaching of tigers Poisoning for protection of cattle
The Task Force (1972) laid out guidelines for the formulation of management
plans for various tiger reserves. Project Tiger was launched in 1973 with 9 tiger
reserves- Bandipur, Corbett, Kanha, Manas, Melghat, Palamau, Ranthambore,
Similipal, and Sunderbans. The basic philosophy was to not interfere with nature.
The survival of the tiger was looked at from the logic of it being at the apex of the
food chain and hence it followed that the natural habitat was to be sustained. A
core-buffer model was followed. The core areas were freed from all sorts of
human activities and the buffer areas were subjected to 'conservation oriented land
use'.4 Each tiger reserve had management plans in accordance with the following
principles: 1. Elimination of all forms of human exploitation and biotic disturbance
from the core area and rationalization of activities in the buffer zone. 2. Restricting

3
Task Force 1972. Project Tiger: A Proposal for Preservation of the Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris Linn.) in India. New
Delhi: Indian Board for Wild Life, Government of India, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India
4
Project Tiger. 2005. Introduction. New Delhi: Project Tiger, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of
India.

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the habitat management only to repair the damages done to the eco-system by
human and other interferences, so as to facilitate recovery of the eco-system to its
natural state. 3. Monitoring the faunal and floral changes over time and carrying
out research about wildlife.

OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT:

The Government of India launched Project Tiger, a centrally sponsored

scheme, in April 1973 to protect tigers and to ensure a viable population of tigers
in India. The Management Plans were to form the bases for the implementation of
the project. These were not approved by the State Governments and the Central
Government in many cases. The Annual Plans of Operation also did not always
have correlation with the management plans. The activities on the ground were
very often dictated by the immediate needs of the project and the funds released by
the Government. The State Governments did not, in many cases, release their share
of funds. Cases of diversion of central funds for other purposes were also noticed
during audit. ally. The norms decided in 1972 to create Tiger Reserves stipulated
an average area of 1500 sqkms. The actual areas of the Tiger Reserves were mostly
less than the prescribed area. 15 out of the 28 Tiger Reserves created had area less
than half the prescribed area which was definitely not conducive for conservation,
protection and sustenance of a viable tiger population. Besides, the boundaries of
many of the Tiger Reserves had not been demarcated nor the areas falling within
the Tiger Reserves notified leg The Project Tiger Directorate did not have the
wherewithal to undertake any monitoring of the implementation of the project.5 It
had only seven personnel including non-ministerial staff and could not even
process the periodical reports and returns received from the Tiger Reserves or to

5
Thapar, Valmik. 1999. The tragedy of the Indian tiger: starting from scratch. 1999. In Riding the tiger: tiger
conservation in human dominated landscapes edited by J. Seidensnicker, S. Christie, and P. Jackson. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.

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critically examine the Management Plans and issue appropriate directions.
Implementation of the project was thus entirely in the hands of the State
Governments whose priorities did not always coincide with those of the Project
Tiger Directorate. Relocation of the people living within the Tiger Reserves as well
as removal and prevention of encroachment is essential to ease the biotic pressure
on the tiger population. Efforts in this direction did not succeed primarily because
of lack of resources. Against the requirement of around Rs.11000 crore to relocate
64951 families living within the Tiger Reserves, the allocation in the Tenth Five
Year Plan was a meager Rs.10.50 crore. Even this money was not properly utilized
by the State Governments. The implementation of the project was severely
hampered by understaffing at the level of Tiger Reserves. The personnel actually
employed were also found to be overaged, undertrained and underequipped in
many cases. The intelligence and communication network at the Reserves level
was also weak. Many tiger reserves neither prepared the tourist management plans
nor assessed the tourist carrying capacity of the reserves despite guidelines issued
by the Project Tiger Directorate. The conflict between promotion of tourism and
earning of revenue on the one hand and ecological protection of the tiger habitat on
the other was thus not resolved. Various activities under the village eco-
development component of the India Eco- Development Project were not carried
out efficiently and avoidable extra expenditure of Rs.5.17 crore was noticed in
audit. The census of tigers was generally carried by counting pugmarks which is
not considered a fool-proof methodology. The census was not conducted annually
in most of the Tiger Reserves and it was also not uptodate. 6.5.3) In the 15 Tiger
Reserves created up to 1984, the total number of tigers increased from 1121 in
1984 to 1141 in 2001-02, a rate of increase which highlights the ineffectiveness of
the measures taken under the Project Tiger to attain a viable tiger population.

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During the same period, the overall tiger population in the country declined from
3623 to 2906.

PROJECT TIGER AND MONEY TRAIL:

Project Tiger is a Centrally-Sponsored Scheme (CSS).6 Both the Central and the
State Governments jointly provide the money required by the Project Tiger
National Parks. This section describes how funds are sanctioned for Project Tiger
National Parks. Funds under the Five Year Plans (Plan Funds) The Project Tiger
receives funds in accordance with the Five-Year Plan. A year prior to the
beginning of each Fiver-Year Plan, the Planning Commission calls for a meeting of
all the States to decide how much funds will be allocated to each State and under
various heads. Each state submitted a proposal of how much funds it needed to the
Deputy Advisor of Environment, Planning Commission. The proposal is negotiated
before the meeting on the proposal takes place in New Delhi. On the conclusion of
negotiations the amount allocated to each Project Tiger National Park in each state
is finalised for the duration of the ensuing Five-Year Plan. The only restriction is
that the spent amount must not exceed the amount that was sanctioned for the Five
Year Plan. Every year the Central Government indicates to the State Governments
the amount of funds available to them for the next financial year. This is usually
done by the end of the third quarter of the current financial year. Based on this
indicated figure, Field Directors prepare what is called an Annual Plan of
Operation for the Project Tiger National Park under their jurisdiction. The Chief
Wildlife Warden then approves this Annual Plan of Operation and Forest Secretary

6
http://www.environmental-auditing.org/Portals/0/AuditFiles/Summary_Project%20Tiger-Summary.pdf

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of each State before it is sent to the Director of Project Tiger. The Annual Plan of
Operation may be called the Demand for Grants of the individual national parks.
The APOs have all expenditure divided under three heads: 1) Non-recurring: The
non-recurring portion of expenditure primarily includes expenditure on buildings,
out of routine repairs, purchase of equipment and other expenditure on items of
permanent nature. Basically it may be called expenditure on capital goods. 2)
Recurring: This head of expenditure includes items such as salaries, rents, and
other activities that are routine in nature. 3) Eco-development: This includes
educating villagers, improving Park management, developing the villages around
the parks and other development oriented activities. All expenditures under non-
recurring and eco-development are totally paid for by the Central Government. The
Central Government and the Government of the State in which the park is
geographically situated share recurring expenditure on a 50:50 basis. It must be
noted that the year of operation runs in consonance with the financial and not the
calendar year. The APO is a request for funds for the parks from Project Tiger
Directorate, Bikaner House, New Delhi. Project Tiger receives this Annual Plan of
Operation that contains a detailed breakdown of the line items under which the
park proposes to spend the allocated funds. The degree of detail present in an
Annual Plan of Operation varies from park to park The Director of Project Tiger
reviews the APOs of various parks on receiving them. After reviewing them, the
Project Tiger Directorate may sanction the full amount (which is rarely the case),
reduce the heads of expenditure on various heads, remove certain heads altogether,
direct a new allocation of funds between the various heads or even suggest new
heads. However, at all times it must ensure that the total amount sanctioned to each
reserve does not exceed the total amount allocated for that particular reserve in the
current Five-year Plan. If there are major discrepancies, the APO is returned to the
concerned State for revaluation. The Director of Project Tiger seems to have
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considerable power in this regard. Once the Director of Project Tiger has approved
an APO, it passes on the Additional Inspector General of Forest who reviews the
APO. After review and approval of the Annual Plan of Operation by the Additional
inspector General of Forests, the proposed expenditure has to be authorised by: a)
The Joint-Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests, if the sanctioned
amount is less than rupees one crore. b) The Secretary, Ministry of Environment
and Forests, if the sanctioned amount is in excess of rupees one crore. The
competent authority to release the funds is the Integrated Finance Department
(IFD) of the Ministry of Environment and Forests. Project Tiger Directorate writes
to the Integrated Finance Department with the sanctioned Annual Plan of
Operation. The Integrated Finance Department also has to give its approval for the
money to be released.

HIGHLIGHTS OF PROJECT TIGER:7

There were wide gaps between the financial projections made in

the Management Plans and the Annual Plans of Operations and the actual release
of funds by the Project Tiger Directorate and the State Government. (Para 4.3) As
per the decision of the Special Task Force in 1972, Tiger Reserves should consist
of a sizeable core area and a buffer zone around the core. These requirements were
not met in many Tiger Reserves. Most of the Tiger Reserves do not have a
designated, functional buffer zone, which is essential for redressing the park-
people interface problems and to elicit local public support for conservation. (Para
6.1, 6.1.1) Out of the six new Tiger Reserves approved for creation by the
Government in the IX Plan, only four were created. (Para 6.1.3) Since tiger
population breeds well and grows rapidly in habitats that are without disturbance,
64,951 families including 17,650 families living in the core areas were to be

7
http://endangered-tiger.blogspot.in/2010/02/project-tiger.html

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relocated outside the Tiger Reserves. Relocation of 64,951 families needs Rs
11,041 crore against which only Rs 10.50 crore was provided in the X Plan. (Para
6.2.1) Though directives regarding computation of visitor carrying capacity had
been issued, many Tiger Reserves have unregulated tourism. Very little effort has
gone in for recycling the tourism receipts to the stakeholder host communities.
(Para 6.5.2, Though the need for a network of corridors connecting the Tiger
Reserves and the adjacent forest areas, to enable tigers to migrate through the
corridors was recognized in 1985, there is slow progress in the efforts for creation
of the corridors. (Para 7.5) Irregularities involving Rs 12.06 crore were noticed
under the village eco-development component in Pench, Buxa, Gir and Nagarhole.
(Para 7.6.2.1, 7.6.2.2) Funds of Rs 13.90 crore accumulated under Village
Development Fund in Buxa, Ranthambore, Nagarhole and Periyar were not
utilized for post project sustainability. Besides there was short realization of
Village Development Fund of Rs 89 lakh at Nagarhole (Para 7.6.2.4) Even after
more than three decades of Project Tiger, the research activities in various Tiger
Reserves were adversely impacted by lack of requisite laboratories or research
officers. (Para 7.7) Protection measures in the Tiger Reserves were weak due to
absence of measures to combat poaching, poor communication network,
inadequate provision of arms and ammunition, deficiencies in creation of strike
force, poor intelligence gathering, inadequate patrolling camps and tardy progress
in concluding the cases of wildlife crimes. As a result, poaching of tigers continued
and touched an annual level of 22 over a period of six years. (Para 8,8.1.1 to 8.1.5
and 8.3.1) Most of the reserves suffer from deployment of aged field staff, which
has adversely affected the protection efforts. (Para 8.3.3.2) MoEF had not taken
any action to strengthen the organizational structure of the Project Tiger
Directorate in as much as against 38 posts identified in the initial project report in
1972, it was functioning with only seven personnel against the sanctioned strength
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of 13 posts as of May 2006. (Para 8.4) The watch over majority of exit/ entry
points at airports, seaports, land ports and check posts was inadequate to monitor
the illegal passage of wildlife and wildlife products through these points. (Para
8.5.3.3) The Steering Committee, the Apex body which reviews the progress of the
Project Tiger met only four times during 1997-2006, as against 18 meetings
required to be held at an interval of six months. (Para 9.1.1) The system of
watching the receipt of returns regarding tiger estimation from the reserves and the
compilation of figures at the Project Directorate was poor. (Para 9.2.1.2) The
concurrent monitoring mechanism for the assessment of the effectiveness of the
management plan and its various components at the various Tiger Reserves by the
Project Directorate was completely derailed due to non-receipt of the monthly
progress/summary reports and the quarterly, half yearly and annual reports from
most of the Tiger Reserves. (Para 9.3) In the fifteen Tiger Reserves created upto
1984, the total number of tigers increased from 1121 in 1984 to only 1141 in 2001-
02, a rate of increase which shows the ineffectiveness of the measures taken by
Project Tiger authorities to attain a viable tiger population.8 During the same
period, the overall tiger population in the country declined from 3623 to 2906. The
Project Tiger authorities have not even developed any accepted norms for
sustaining a viable tiger population. (Para 10)

RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION:

All Tiger Reserves should have a well-formulated

management plan encompassing long and medium term targets. The annual plans
of operations should be based on the management plans to ensure appropriate
allocation of resources. While enabling a planned approach to tiger conservation,
the annual plan of operations should also provide a measure for achievement of

8
http://iced.cag.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/C-21/DB%20Sahu.pdf

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targets against efforts made. Efforts may be made to complete the detailed
mapping of Tiger Reserves early so that the management plans are based on
reliable information. The boundaries of the existing reserves should be notified
The system of allocation of financial resources to Tiger Reserves needs to be
streamlined. The Project Tiger Directorate should establish formal criteria for
allocation of funds and prioritize the Tiger Reserves based on their risk perception.
The issues relating to late release of central funds, diversion of funds and short
release of counterpart funds by the States need to be addressed at appropriate levels
to ensure that tiger conservation efforts become fruitful. The Government should
make a firm commitment to relocate the local families/villages from the core and
buffer areas of the Tiger Reserves and draw a comprehensive resettlement plan for
the purpose, adequately supported by a credible financial package. Stringent steps
need to be taken to evict the encroachers. The Government should frame a
comprehensive tourism management policy for the Tiger Reserves clearly spelling
out the roles of the Project Tiger Directorate and the State authorities. Tourism
should be regulated such that human impact on conservation efforts of ecologically
sensitive areas is minimised. The Government should lay down a clear-cut agenda
for coexistence by addressing the needs of the people sharing habitat with tigers
and at the same time ensuring that eco-sensitive areas are protected from human
disturbances, without diluting the conservation efforts. Efforts should be made to
improve communication and intelligence network, to create a strike force and to
provide adequate arms and ammunition to the project personnel. For effective
patrolling of the reserves, number of camps/ chowkis and forest guards and
foresters in the camps should be augmented. The staff deployed should be
physically fit, capable of carrying out patrolling duties and adequately trained.
Efforts should be made to augment the manpower capacity at the Project Tiger
Directorate to equip it as an effective oversight agency. Monitoring mechanisms at
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the Centre and the State levels need to be strengthened. An effective system of
follow up of recommendations should be instituted and the accountability of
officials at various levels needs to be enforced. Census/ estimation of tigers should
be done regularly. Techniques of tiger estimation need to be refined so that the
reliability of census data is enhanced.

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REFERENCES:

1.Task Force, Indian Board for Wild Life. 1972. Project Tiger: A Proposal for
Preservation of the Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris Linn.) in India. New Delhi:,
Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India

2.Project Tiger. 2005. Past, Present and FuturE. New Delhi: Project Tiger, Ministry
of Environment and Forests, Government of India.
http://projecttiger.nic.in/past.htm.

3.Task Force 1972. Project Tiger: A Proposal for Preservation of the Tiger
(Panthera tigris tigris Linn.) in India. New Delhi: Indian Board for Wild Life,
Government of India, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India

4.Project Tiger. 2005. Introduction. New Delhi: Project Tiger, Ministry of

Environment and Forests, Government of India

5.Thapar, Valmik. 1999. The tragedy of the Indian tiger: starting from scratch.
1999. In Riding the tiger: tiger conservation in human dominated landscapes edited
by J. Seidensnicker, S. Christie, and P. Jackson. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.

6.http://www.environmentalauditing.org/Portals/0/AuditFiles/Summary_Project%2
0Tiger-Summary.pdf

7.http://iced.cag.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/C-21/DB%20Sahu.pdf

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