WILDLIFE FIRST CAMPAIGNS

Influencing Policy and Advocacy 

Specialized Wildlife administration mechanism

The national wildlife policy envisaged the need to have a separate wildlife administration to manage wildlife reserves. For several years such an administrative mechanism was not fully in place in Karnataka. Wildlife First played a major role in influencing the decision makers on the urgent need to address this fundamental issue which would have a lasting impact on the complex task of managing wildlife. These efforts spread over a three-year period resulted in the landmark order by the state government for creation of independent wildlife circles and divisions under the direct control of Chief Wildlife Warden. 

Mounting a critique

With a view to minimize the negative impacts of the ill-conceived India Eco-development project funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) of the World Bank, Wildlife First and its Scientific Adviser mounted a critique on the GEF sponsored eco-development plan. 

The GEF eco-development plan, which ostensibly intended to conserve biodiversity in some of the best managed wildlife reserves in India (including Nagarahole reserve in Karnataka), actually overlooked fundamental issues concerning the proximate causes of biodiversity loss and the ecological needs of extinction prone large mammal species like the tiger, elephant, gaur and others . Many of the serious concerns were extensively disseminated through a series of letters written to the World Bank and various senior government officials since 1996. Some of the pressing concerns were:

a) Biologically intact large mammal parks form less than one per cent of India’s land area and it is of paramount importance to break all market driven, exploitative/extractive linkages between biological resources in these parks and the growing local markets outside them. 

b) The GEF document completely downplayed the urgent need for reducing human population densities inside the targeted parks through well-planned and executed voluntary resettlement schemes which the people were themselves demanding since 1991. 

c) While critical needs of protection, the most important task, was allocated a small percentage of the total funds, an unnecessarily large chunk of money was earmarked for seminars, foreign travel and consultants’ fees.  The major share of the budget was earmarked for developmental activities in villages around the park based on a naïve assumption that such sub-critical interventions to improve the local people’s economic status would actually make them very benign towards the reserve (events during the five years of project implementation have shown how flawed this approach of “throwing money at a third world conservation problem” was, without addressing the underlying causes).

d) Wildlife First and its partners argued that injudiciously pumping such large sums of money would have a deleterious impact. Firstly, park officials would be distracted from their primary responsibility of protection towards sundry activities outside the park (especially when there were 30 per cent vacancies). Secondly, with too much money being handled in so short a period, misuse and corruption was bound to increase and “coveted” tenures at these “GEF-World Bank reserves” will attract the least scrupulous elements in the forest departments. 

Ignoring these well grounded arguments, the World Bank pressed ahead with the funding and at the end of the five-year project, many of the concerns that had been foreseen unfortunately came true, greatly affecting the management of Nagarahole reserve which have been carefully documented for future publication and dissemination. 

Advise on management

In order to ensure scientific management of wildlife habitats, Wildlife First, its scientific advisor and partners have provided inputs to the management plans of Nagarahole, Kudremukh and Bhadra reserves. At another level, our expertise on issues relating to protection, fire control and other management problems of wildlife reserves, based on long term field monitoring, have been regularly shared with the forest department resulting in better management. 

Policy to empower forest personnel 
Forest department personnel often encounter dangerous gangs of poachers and smugglers inside wildlife reserves. Being outnumbered and outgunned in many of these situations the personnel are constrained to open fire at these illegal intruders to protect themselves and safeguard valuable wildlife and their habitat. During the eighties, forest personnel were harassed by the local police for use of firearms. This had a devastating impact on the morale of the forest staff which affected enforcement of anti-poaching measures. Consequently, Wildlife First and its conservation partners played a catalytic role in convincing the government on the need to provide legal immunity to the forest staff (which they had been demanding) when they used firearms for self defense and to protect wildlife. Following the lead set by Assam, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka several other states framed suitable laws and procedure enabling forest staff to use fire arms to deal with such situations.

Other campaigns:
>> Major initiatives, endeavours
>> Training and capacity building
>> Protection and care of protectors
>> Public opinion and outreach