States Strive for Balance Between Tiger Conservation and Tourism

Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images A tiger at the Ranthambore National Park near Jaipur, Rajasthan, on Oct. 22, 2010.

MUMBAIâ€" In July last year, the Indian Supreme Court banned tourism in the core areas of 41 tiger reserves in an attempt to protect the 1,700 tigers in the country. Three months later, the court reversed its decision but told the state-managed reserves to abide by new guidelines drafted by the National Tiger Conservation Authority.

Since then, the guidelines, which call for restricting tourism to 20 percent of the parks’ core areas and limit construction in the tigers’ primary habitat, have created confusion among states over how to interpret the ministry’s vague mandates. Much is at stake in these interpretations, as one Ranthambhore tigress can generate some $130 million in direct tourism revenue in her adult life, according to one estimate.

“Some states have not changed much â€" they have carried on what they were doing earlier,” said Krishna Kumar Singh, a founding member of the Ecotourism Society of India, a nonprofit organization that promotes environmentally responsible tourism. “Some states have implemented these guidelines in a way that has restricted tourism to quite an extent.” The interpretation of the rules might even vary within different state parks, he said.

“When you look at it from the outside, you say, well, is it to control tourism and for the wildlife and the environment, or is it to kill tourism?” Mr. Singh said. “People are now wondering whether they can survive this kind of drop in business.”

Madhya Pradesh, once known as India’s “tiger state” before losing that title to Karnataka after the most recent tiger census, has been one of the states most adversely affected by the new rules. Much of the problem, according to Mr. Singh, is that most Madhya Pradesh parks lack the local mechanisms, namely the Local Advisory Committees, required by the guidelines to implement and monitor the policy.

“The committee was to decide the area that should be open for tourists, and the number of jeeps that were allowed to visit the parks each day,” said Mr. Singh. Most state reserves still lack a fully functioning advisory committee, he said, if one exists at all.

“A lot was left on this committee to decide,” said Mr. Singh. “If that committee is not in place, then obviously that decision falls on the director, and the director is taking an ad hoc decision on that.”

World Wide Fund for Nature, via Associated Press A young tiger at the Bandhavgarh National Park in Madhya Pradesh on June 13, 2007.

At Bandhavgarh National Park, one of Madhya Pradesh’s most popular reserves, questionable implementation of the new policy is evident. The number of safaris has been cut by 50 percent. In addition, the smaller quota has been further divided between the morning and afternoon safaris, which makes it even more difficult for tourists to visit. Mr. Singh estimated that the swift reduction of safaris has caused tourism to drop 50 percent statewide.

The ministry’s guidelines on tiger tourism have brought about some necessary changes, like limiting the number of jeeps that can enter the forest areas, said Phillip Davis, founder of Tiger Awareness, a British nongovernmental organization that has supported Indian nongovernmental organizations working in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and the Sunderbans since 1998. “We need to respect wildlife, though from a distance and not crowding on top of it,” he said in an e-mail.

But one of the main problems with the guidelines is that they assume tourism is a threat to tigers, said Joanna Van Gruisen, a wildlife photographer who runs Sarai at Toria, an eco-lodge near Panna National Park, in the state of Madhya Pradesh.

Ms. Van Gruisen, a British national who has lived in India for 30 years, and most wildlife conservationists argue that not only does tourism deter poaching and illegal wildlife trafficking, it creates new jobs for locals living in and around the parks.

Instead of asking how the industry could be reorganized to better benefit the wildlife, Ms. Van Gruisen said, the government has mistakenly approached wildlife tourism as a threat.  ”The only industry that has any regulations is tourism,” she said.

She quickly added that she is fine with efforts to reform the industry, but she would like to see more regulations on polluting and environmentally dangerous businesses that pose a greater threat to wildlife. “Why should it be only tourism that is regulated, and not your cement factory or your petrol pump?” she asked.

That idea - that the focus should be on the wildlife and the environment rather than on reducing tourism figures - was at the center of an Ecotourism Society of India conference in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, where one of the chief topics was to brainstorm ways to shift traditional tiger tourism toward a more environmentally friendly approach.

“We were trying to figure out as to what should be the shifts, as well as what should be the issues of eco-tourism that need to be addressed now,” said Mr. Singh, defining ecotourism as a sustainable approach that balances wildlife and forest conservation with the needs of the community and tourism industry.

The two-day conference in April drew speakers from South Africa, Kenya, Australia and other countries that have embraced eco-tourism. The second day looked at India’s legal landscape, industry accountability and responsibility to the community, as well as different ways to foster best practices within an Indian context. The event closed with a three-hour panel discussion with the chief secretary of Madhya Pradesh, R. Parasuram who, according to Mr. Singh, was “keen to take this forward.”

“Ecotourism advocates small scale, less impacting, conservation friendly tourism and emphasizes on educating visitors and ensuring the flow of benefits to the local communities,” said Suhas Kumar, the additional principal chief conservator for wildlife at the Indian Forest Service in Madhya Pradesh, in an e-mail.

Mr. Kumar, who also gave a presentation at the conference, said the central government’s new guidelines reflect these goals and noted that more park authorities are open to eco-tourism as the movement gains traction abroad.

The next steps will be to create policy suggestions for the state or central governments based on feedback from the lively discussions in Bhopal. “There’s going to be some challenging of the guidelines whether in the court or in the ministry itself,” said Mr. Singh. “Even the Madhya Pradesh forest department realizes that the rules and regulations that have come into place are not right. They need to be looked at again.”

He said the government fully expected the tourism industry to challenge some of its interventions to see if a more balanced system can be brought in, and many government officials have already pledged their support.

“The dialogue has started, but we still have a long ways to go,” he said.