Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently released tiger census data which showed India is home to over 3,167 big cats. While tiger conservation efforts are going in the right direction, the increase in the number of wild animals and their ever-shrinking habitat poses a major threat of human-wild conflict. Warren Pereira, documentary director of ‘Tiger 24’, deliberated on the issue in an interview with Zee News Digital. ‘Tiger 24’ is based on the life of a tiger named Ustad, who was declared a man-eater and was later locked up in a zoo.
Pereira, whose documentary aims to promote conservation and raise awareness about the issue, said that if most human-tiger conflicts occur in tiger territory, then the tiger cannot be declared a man-eater. He highlighted the fact that while the number of tigers is increasing, their habitat is not increasing. Excerpts from the interview:
How do you view India’s tiger conservation efforts and where do you see room for improvement?
I think the 6.7 per cent increase in tiger population in 2019 as compared to the previous census shows that tigers have been able to come back. But when you increase the number of tigers, and you do not commensurately increase the core area or protected areas for these animals, you increase human-animal conflict.
Many animals including tigers often die in road accidents. How do you view the government’s decision to develop roads and highways passing through or near forest areas?
It is hard to blame the government alone, as the average Indian consumer is not interested in tiger conservation. They are very interested in having a nice road to drive across the country. There’s a growing middle class that’s interested in enjoying themselves for their own personal satisfaction, and so if they’re going to vote in a way that requires the government to increase infrastructure, and then that infrastructure is protected by tigers. Will collide I think this is the fault of the whole democratic system. However, if there were more people in India who are filing PILs and making laws, or voting for laws that support the increase of tigers, then because it is a democracy, the government has to listen to them . Right now, there is a small percentage of Indians who are interested in conserving wildlife.
What more can be done to get more people involved and raise awareness about wildlife conservation?
I think like in my film Tiger 24, if we can show people that it is in their best interest to conserve the forest and not just the tigers, that is the only way they will get to know about these wild tigers and their conservation. value can be understood. State. When you conserve a tiger forest, not only do you help the tiger, but you also help all the biodiversity within the forest. It also prevents soil erosion, fights climate change, and supports tributaries of rivers, which ultimately leads to a better quality of life for people outside the tiger reserve, including those living in the surrounding areas. Villages, adjoining towns and adjoining cities are included.
What were the challenges you faced while making the Tiger 24 documentary?
There are initially challenges in locating the tiger you are following. In my case Tiger was T24. So first I had to find him. Secondly, as a filmmaker you expect him to display some sort of behavior on that particular day when you find him. The documentary started as a natural history documentary, but then turned into something much bigger involving the legal system and the battle between activists and the state government. Enhancing the documentary to match the scale of the project was challenging.
What else can be done to reduce human-wildlife conflict?
The ultimate solution is to get more space to the tigers and then to set clear boundaries between what is human space and what is tiger space. Once you make this distinction, you can then identify which tigers are a problem and which are not. If a tiger is leaving the core area, leaving the buffer zone and regularly entering human settlements to prey on livestock or villagers, that animal may be considered a problem animal and possibly protected should be removed from the wild population in the larger interest of , However, if the core area is compromised, or a buffer zone does not even exist in the tiger reserve, and if humans are killed inside the tiger’s territory, then the tiger reserve is the problem, not the tiger.