Can tigers, tourists and local communities co-exist? Perhaps they can, argues a new report, pointing to the conservation model of Ranathambore National Park. This seems to be a rare success story.
This is as per the report titled, "The Value of Wildlife Tourism around Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan for Wildlife Conservation and Local Communities" which was released on Thursday.
The report, authored by conservation biologist Dr. Raghu Chundawat and researcher Upamanyu Raju, commissioned by TOFT (Tiger Operators for Tigers), is significant particularly in view of India’s poor record with sustainable tourism practices in and around wildlife reserves.
In India's oldest park, the Corbett Tiger Reserve, eight hotels were recently charged for encroaching on the forest land. Other malpractices in the area range from blind elephants being used to ferry tourists to choking the park's core habitat with hundreds of private jeeps.
Ranathambore, however, offers some hope. The population of tigers has increased from 45 in 2013 to 65 in 2017. The tourist footfall has also increased from 3.2 lakhs to 4.6 lakhs, suggesting that the tiger population is not being adversely affected by visitors. This has allowed the park to raise Rs 19.57 crore through park fees alone, making it Asia's only self-sufficient park.
Tourism at Sawai Madhopur, the nearest city to Ranthambore in Rajasthan, meanwhile saw an annual revenue of Rs 217 crore during the year 2016-17. The report estimated that small businesses at villages that have tourism infrastructure raised a revenue of Rs 1.14 crore - four times higher than the villages without such infrastructure. The revenue generated from shops and businesses along the Ranathambore road was estimated to be Rs 8.7 crore during the same year.
A Tale of Two States
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) introduced guidelines in 2012 for tourism in and around tiger reserves which included the shifting of all tourism infrastructure from the core or critical tiger habitats. This, many state governments have claimed, has led to decrease in revenue from tourism.
The report notes that after the guidelines were implemented in Madhya Pradesh “the state saw a decline in the number of tourists and in the growth of new properties."
But Ranathambore's approach was found to be more pragmatic. It opened up new zones in adjoining tiger habitats, which are now occupied by breeding females.
"In addition to creating a larger breeding population, by opening new zones the Reserve has been able to generate more revenue." As a result, wildlife tourism was "less affected by the restriction on numbers that the guidelines required."
"The Madhya Pradesh government, on the other hand, looked at tourism negatively and used these guidelines to strangulate the growth resulting in a decline, except for an increase in weekend visitation by domestic travellers. These en masse movements from neighbouring cities bring with them indifferent and undesirable behaviour: the large numbers in a short period has brought unruly crowd behaviour inside the reserve during the safaris," it added.
Meanwhile, the share of international visitors also declined by nearly 10%. "This is not a positive sign for Madhya Pradesh nor for the local economy, as the contribution from international visitation to the local economy is much higher than domestic. In these circumstances, the biggest losers are its primary beneficiaries which are the local communities in the areas in which the tourism is operating."
Future Challenges
The report has identified Sawai Madhopur as a “tourism hotspot", which "presently has little impact on the park itself", since it does not cut off the wildlife corridors. But it warns that "its footprint is growing and will be a problem in future if steps are not taken in terms of better tourism zoning and planning, improved water economy measures, elevated reliance on renewable energy use and much improved measures for waste management."
The situation is further complicated by "poor ecological awareness and unsustainable footprint of most accommodation", emphasising the need for increased "awareness and
understanding of environmental issues". Waste disposal practices, for instance, remain very basic, the report says.
With 89% hotels either dumping their waste in a nearby village or the municipal dump, the survey found that 11% of the lodges burnt or buried their plastic waste with no plastic recycling plan in any hotel.
Peaceful Co-existence
The report notes that tourism in the park has led to "considerable economic benefits" and "improvement in quality of life achieved...to communities and villagers living within the periphery of Sawai Madhopur (within 4 kms radius of the entry gate)". It argues for the need for a more "equitable distribution of the revenues from nature based tourism over the whole of the parks tourism “catchment” ensuring the long term health and welfare of both wildlife and people."
This, the report said, could offer a conservation model different from the present system of protected areas. It said, "currently there is no conservation model within the system that supports conservation of tiger outside protected boundaries. This can only be achieved with the goodwill of local communities. This goodwill can be generated in the communities when they are beneficiaries of the conservation initiatives."
This would allow for the conservation of wildlife over a larger area, beyond protected landscapes and therefore, required an "alternate, inclusionary, conservation model where local communities become major beneficiaries" of tiger tourism, the report said.
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