On Monday, one year and a day after becoming prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh traveled to Ranthambore National Park, the celebrated sanctuary of India's national animal: the tiger.
The visit to Ranthambore Tiger Reserve was less a warm and fuzzy photo opportunity than an attempt to take on a budding political crisis. The tiger, as endangered worldwide as it is iconic in this country, is vanishing from India's tiger parks.
With a growing and lucrative market for everything tiger -- from skin to bone to the tiger's penis, used in Chinese traditional medicine -- tiger poachers have evidently had a run on several government-protected parks. A handful of poaching networks have been nabbed here in the capital in recent months, and their bundles of carefully tanned tiger skins displayed to a news media hungry for as much tiger-poaching copy as possible.
Most startling of all, a federal law enforcement inquiry found earlier this month that there was not a single tiger left at another famous Indian tiger reserve, called Sariska. At least two or three poaching networks were operating in the park, the probe found, and it raised the possibility of collusion by forest guards. Even in Ranthambore, the jewel in India's tiger sanctuary crown, 18 tigers have gone missing, according to press reports.
In fact, the tiger is among several endangered species that are in peril across the country, largely because of pressures on land and water. But the tiger, because of its symbolic potency, is the one that has seized the imagination of the country and now caught the prime minister's attention.
"Reports of the decline in the tiger population have once again alerted us to this grim reality," Singh said in a speech in April, adding, "Our government will take all the required steps to protect the tiger and other endangered species."
Singh ordered the federal investigation into Sariska. He appointed a so-called Tiger Task Force to draft a conservation policy. Earlier this year, a meeting of the National Board of Wildlife, which he chairs, was convened for the first time in 17 months. His office has even dangled the possibility of creating a special law enforcement unit assigned to wildlife protection.
India is a signer of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species, and it stands to face punitive measures should it fail to do its part to curb the illegal trade in tigers.
The Tiger Task Force called last Thursday for tougher measures to control poaching. Also last week, figures from the environment ministry showed that at least 122 tigers had been killed in the country's sanctuaries between 1999 and 2003; another 62 succumbed to what the government called "unnatural deaths."
"From a law enforcement perspective, it can't get any more serious," said John Sellar, a senior enforcement officer from the convention on trade of endangered species.
"You're talking about a highly endangered species," he said.
No one really knows how many tigers are left in India. The environment ministry estimates more than 3,600 tigers in its 28 tiger reserves, though tiger advocates angrily refute their claims. A tiger census is under way in several national parks.
Today, of India's 28 reserves, at least five are in trouble, according to one of the country's most vocal tiger champions, Belinda Wright, of the Wildlife Protection Society of India.
"It's an international scandal," she said. "I think that's why the prime minister is sitting up a little bit."
Circling around the vanishing tigers story in India is the question of what happens to the people who live around the tigers, namely the villagers who stand to gain vast sums of money by aiding poachers. In a statement, the Tiger Task Force said that among the failures in conservation was the "increasing hostility of local communities who share the tiger's habitat."
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was