Working together to protect India’s tigers
As the partners gather at their annual conservation seminar, we look at some of the fantastic work the Satpuda Landscape Tiger Partnership is doing to support people and save tigers.
A wild tiger (c) Yashvardhan Dalmia
A collective of wildlife organisations working in Central India, brought together by Born Free in 2004 and joined by the common goal of tiger conservation, the diversity of conservation efforts across the Satpuda Landscape Tiger Partnership is one of the key reasons for its success.
Each partner in the Satpuda Landscape Tiger Partnership aims to encourage peaceful coexistence between local communities and tigers, and reduce potential conflict situations. Despite the added challenge of heavy rains and flash floods in July to September, some fantastic work has been done by all of the partners.
Bombay Natural History Society, one of India’s oldest and largest conservation and research organisations, works in the Chandrapur District to provide conservation education. Some of the schools where they operate are in the fringes of the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger reserve. In only six months, they have conducted conservation education lectures in 50 schools, reaching over 2,000 pupils. And, by the end of the current school year, they aim to complete an incredible 250 conservation activities across the 50 schools.
The Nature Conservation Society Amravati uses public health outreach clinics to build trust with local communities and gain support for tiger conservation in the buffer areas of four tiger reserves. At their health camps, they have interacted with more than 14,000 villagers, and gathered useful information regarding tiger movements, conflict situations, and illegal activities such as poaching and logging.
Alongside this, they provide healthcare to 320 forest staff. This includes forest guards, fire watchers and range forest officers, who can sometimes live deep within the forest and have very limited access to health services. By providing health services to the forest staff, improving their health and wellbeing, the Nature Conservation Society Amravati helps forest staff to carry out their duties more efficiently and improve forest protection in the tiger reserves.
The Satpuda Foundation run a Landscape Monitoring Unit and aims to reduce human-wildlife conflict with big cats in the Satpuda landscape. Since last April, they have distributed 500 ‘light deterrent systems’ to 480 farmers in the buffer areas of the Pench and Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserves. These lights have been found to reduce crop damage incidents by herbivores, such as wild boar and sambar, and help to scare off large predators such as tigers and leopards at night, and thus promote coexistence between people and wildlife.
The Corbett Foundation takes a holistic approach to human-wildlife conflict mitigation in the Kanha Tiger Reserve. You may have seen the recent article we shared about their workshops on sustainable farming practices. Alongside this, they also have a successful stall-feeding project which helps establish farm plots to grow nutritious green fodder for cattle in the village. This means that livestock don’t need to be taken into the forest to graze and, by doing this, cattle predation by tigers is reduced.
In the six months from April, The Corbett Foundation helped support 35 households to harvest fodder, despite heavy rains and flash flooding damaging some maize crops. They also provided free treatment to 15 cattle following big cat attacks. By the farmers bearing no costs for the treatment, The Corbett Foundation help to reduce outrage towards tigers and leopards, and reduce the risk of retaliatory killings.
TRACT women’s workshop
The Tiger Research and Conservation Trust (TRACT) works hard to protect tigers and their prey species in the Nawegaon Nagzhira Tiger Reserve landscape and facilitate a peaceful coexistence between humans and large carnivores through a range of awareness initiatives. They do this by training local community members to become Tiger Ambassadors.
These Tiger Ambassadors reside in the forest fringes and become leaders in human-wildlife conflict mitigation. Recently, an injured leopard was rescued from a guest house after it was detected by one of the Tiger Ambassadors. The TRACT team were then able to assist the Forest Department in controlling the crowds while the leopard was taken to a rescue centre for further treatment and observation.
As you can see, all the partners in the Satpuda Landscape Tiger Partnership contribute valuable and diverse efforts to protect central Indian tigers and Born Free is proud to partner with them and help support the wonderful work they do.