It Takes A Village
by Eric Dinerstein
Friends of mine who live near the National Zoo have often described their love of waking to the sounds of their non-human neighbors, roaring at dawn. But those who live where large predators roam freely regard big cats with fear and awe. Would you, for example, welcome tigers as your neighbors? What if the Rock Creek corridor were an extension of Silver Spring National Park, an important sanctuary for tigers, and the big cats roamed freely through its riparian forests? Some D.C. residents would work to protect the District's tigers, but other citizen groups would lobby to have the cats removed, citing them as potential menaces that have no place in a human-dominated landscape. As far-fetched as this example might seem, it is exactly the problem facing defenders of tigers and their natural habitats in Asia. As human populations swell in rural areas, tiger habitats are becoming increasingly shared with local villagers, and tigers are always the ones who are evicted.
Biologists and managers employ a variety of strategies to save wild tigers. More traditional measures include creation of tiger sanctuaries where people and their livestock are excluded, effective use of anti-poaching teams, and fences. These techniques have helped the tiger recover from episodes of poaching that nearly wiped out entire populations. But as we gain more knowledge of what it takes to guarantee a future for tigers, we have begun to realize that traditional approaches, particularly when applied to small reserves, are nothing more than temporary solutions.
Tigers need large areas to survive in the wild. The average size of a protected area in the tiger's range is about 212 square miles, about three times the size of the District of Columbia. But this is far too small to maintain a healthy population long term. The obvious answer is to expand the size of reserves. And, in fact, many tiger sanctuaries have been enlarged to squeeze in space for a few more animals. But big blocks of natural habitat containing healthy populations of tiger prey are not enough. Two important ingredients for successful tiger conservation are still necessary. Tigers need to be able to disperse across large landscapes and, in the words of one tiger expert, "Tigers need to be worth more alive than dead to the people who live around them."
These key ingredients require the cooperation of local people. Potential new habitat and important dispersal corridors around any tiger sanctuary on the Indian subcontinent are part of a larger landscape dotted with clusters of villages. What can conservationists do to convince poor villagers that living tigers are more valuable than tigers as living room carpets?
The World Wildlife Fund's and its collaborator's efforts to save tigers in a lowland forest of Nepal have addressed these critical issues. The buffer zones-land between the protected area and agriculture-around Nepal's Royal Chitwan National Park support the highest density of tigers in the world and perhaps the highest density of Asian greater one-horned rhinoceroses (Rhinoceros unicornis). The 360-square-mile park, located in a relatively flat, low-lying zone, encompasses a mix of alluvial grasslands and riverine forests. The zone, called the Terai, once dominated the Gangetic and Brahmaputra flood plains. Only remnants of these lush habitats remain. With strict protection since the park was established in 1973, the population of tigers in Chitwan and the adjacent Parsa Wildlife Reserve has recovered to about 118 individuals. Populations of rhinos are at the highest level in decades.
These encouraging trends result from the presence of the Nepalese Army inside the park, an effective anti-poaching information network, and careful monitoring by His Majesty's government and such non-governmental organizations as the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation (KMTNC). Others familiar with Chitwan attribute part of the recovery to a well-established ecotourism industry that has created jobs for local people, as well as the long-standing policy of permitting villagers to cut thatch grass and canes in the park.
Our study of the economic effects of the ecotourism industry on local household income refutes some of these observations. We found that only a tiny fraction of the $4 to 5 million per year earned by the hotels is recycled into local economies. Only 1,100 people are directly employed in the ecotourism industry, out of 87,000 in the workforce. And indirect employment of local people is minimal, with few household incomes affected by ecotourism. The thatch grass effect is also a myth. Plant succession in Chitwan's grasslands has greatly reduced the amount of thatch species available, and many people are more interested in concealing much needed firewood in their grass bundles during the two-week free access period than in collecting the grass.
What appears irrefutable is that the rebounding wildlife populations in Chitwan are the result of strict protection efforts against poaching and encroachment, not the benefits accruing to the local people living near the park. For species like tigers, which are sensitive to high levels of human disturbance, there is no substitute for large, strictly protected core areas. Without this element, ecodevelopment experiments in park buffer areas are building on quicksand.
Another truth was also emerging: The park was too small to maintain viable populations of tigers and rhinos, and the prime habitat in the buffer zones and corridors attached to the park was severely degraded. To support tigers and rhinos, degraded habitats and buffer zones would have to be restored, dispersal corridors maintained, and core areas kept inviolate. But this could not be done without the collaboration of local villagers. Thus, one of the initial goals of the project was to take the pressure off these habitats by meeting the natural resource needs of local people through better management of the buffer zone forests.
Beginning in the early 1980s, Nepalese conservationists lobbied unsuccessfully to allow local village committees, known as User Group Committees, to assume management of degraded Forest Department lands adjacent to protected reserves. But in 1993 a major reform in national policy allowed legal buffer zones to be created around existing protected areas. Management of these zones would be handed over to local User Group Committees, provided that they develop effective management plans. Additional landmark legislation came in 1995, when Nepal's Parliament ratified a series of bylaws requiring that 50 percent of the revenue generated by protected areas be recycled into local development programs in the buffer zones surrounding national parks, instead of going entirely to the Ministry of Finance. Although not yet fully operational, these two initiatives have paved the way for establishing legal economic incentives to reduce pressures on core reserves, and to conserve wildlife habitats outside parks.
Starting Small
A $10,000 award from the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) in 1988 financed the creation of a native tree nursery
on the private land of a KMTNC forest ranger. The following
year a degraded 80-acre plot of government land in the buffer
zone was fenced and turned into a locally managed tree plantation
called the Bagmara Community Forest. Native rosewood and acacia
were planted, along with three other native tree species,
to provide timber and firewood. Some of the tree species,
particularly rosewood, were also planted as an incentive for
local people to support long-term habitat regeneration; the
valuable wood is predicted to sell for large sums in 20 years.
Other areas of degraded forest were fenced off to allow natural regeneration and to discourage grazing and timber cutting. Within two years, the community expanded its forest regeneration area to about 3,730 acres, with funding from the Biodiversity Conservation Network. Once the regeneration areas were fenced and protected, the same wildlife species that inhabit Chitwan began to recolonise the buffer zone. To return more profits to local people, we designed a community-based ecotourism program for the regenerating forest. We established nature trails for elephant-back safaris, and hired members of the local community to protect the wildlife from poachers and the habitat from trespassers illegally collecting firewood. A wildlife viewing tower, or machan, was constructed, enabling tourists to enjoy overnight stays in the jungle and to observe rhinos using wallows in the viewing area. Local people, through their User Group Committee, undertook management of the wildlife viewing tower.
The result has given the people who live adjacent to the buffer zone forests a new sense of empowerment. The plantations have begun meeting the local needs for fodder grasses, and partly offset the needs for firewood. The biggest gains have been in the development of local people as entrepreneurs in a community-based ecotourism program and the desire for replication of these activities in many other parts of the buffer zone of Chitwan.
By July of 1997, these effort had resulted in the recovery of about 6.5 square miles of critical riverine forest habitat in the Chitwan buffer zone. The early success of local management and guardianship of these habitats is striking. In the past two years not a single dead tree has been cut in the regeneration areas. The User Group Committee used volunteer labor to dig extensive oxbows that rhinos now use for wallows. One oxbow was stocked with mugger crocodiles and has also become home to many species of wading birds uncommon in the area before habitat management began. A critically important tall grassland favored by tigers and rhinos has been fenced to keep out cattle, and it will be expanded greatly in the coming year. Illegal firewood collection in the regeneration areas has ceased, as these areas are patrolled by local village watchmen paid for by the User Committee.
Especially important, wildlife ecotourism is carefully managed so as not to degrade the habitat. Elephant-back viewing is limited to one-hour rides, with a maximum of five elephants using the area at a time. Elephant drivers are required to stay on trails carefully designed for tourist wildlife viewing. The trails, the wildlife viewing towers .and the short-grass clearings around them are maintained by the User Group Committee, who pay for the upkeep using revenues from the ecotourism micro-enterprise.
Promising Results
Have community-based activities enhanced tiger conservation
in the larger landscape of Chitwan? The answer appears to
be a qualified yes. The User Group Committee and the local
community they represent view themselves as local guardians
of endangered species. They are now actively protecting the
areas they manage from potential poachers and illegal wood
cutters. Since the project began, no rhinos or tigers have
been poached in the vicinity over which local people have
jurisdiction. Moreover, 6.5 square miles of critical wildlife
habitat is well on its way to recovery. And for this habitat,
that is not a trivial amount. Rhinos can reach densities
of more than 16 individuals per square mile and tigers in
these habitats achieve some of the highest densities recorded
in Asia.
These regeneration areas and the profits generated in the first year have become renowned. Several other User Group Committees along the periphery of Chitwan are determined to use this model. One of these newly planned regeneration areas will form part of the last remaining forested corridor connecting the deciduous hill forests of the Siwalik Range to the sub-tropical semi-deciduous forests of the low-lying Terai belt. This corridor to upland areas will have a large ecological impact on maintaining dispersal possibilities for tigers and many other species. Similar conservation investments initiated by local people are planned for five other village committees over the next three years in the eastern part of Chitwan.
During the first year of the local tourism operation, from November 1995 through October 1996, 10,632 tourists visited the Bagmara Community Forest, generating $276,432. Before November 1995, the income earned by local people and the national park for use of this area was zero; local nature guides took tourists to the Bagmara Community Forest, but they had no legal right or mechanism to collect a user fee, nor did Chitwan National Park staff.
But with changes in the law, all visitors to the Bagmara Community Forest between November 1995 and October 1996 were charged $26. Half of the Chitwan entry fee collected by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) went to support the park. About $12,905-or four percent of the total revenue generated during the first year-was allocated to the Bagmara User Group Committee, and $130,392-50 per cent-was generated for the DNPWC. The money earned by the Bagmara committee was used to build and refurbish three schools and a health post. This money also covered yearly maintenance costs for the 1,112-acre regeneration area and the wildlife viewing tower. The Bagmara committee earned an additional estimated $8,300 in 1996 from thinning the rosewood trees planted adjacent to the wildlife regeneration areas. Thinning can be repeated every five years. In 13 years, when trees are ready for harvest, the amount earned will be substantially higher.
Half of the 1996 revenues from the local ecotourism project that were turned over to the national park ($69,108) has been put into an account containing other funds to be recycled to local development. As a result, $491,362 is available from 1996 alone for local development activities.
The global tiger conservation community desperately needs some success stories. And the Chitwan project is viewed as one. But the conservation goals remain only half-fulfilled. The challenges ahead are to expand restoration efforts to the larger landscape, to promote stall-feeding of cattle, to reduce cattle herds in general, and to meet firewood demands in places where buffer zone forests are not meeting local demands. Mounting pressures on natural resources in developing nations in Asia make conserving lands adjacent to protected areas an immediate goal. Community-based ecotourism in regenerated buffer zones is one way to provide incentives that lead to local guardianship of tigers. Perhaps poor villagers in lowland Nepal can teach many of us in the industrialized world how to live with tigers and other large wild cats as neighbors.
Eric Dinerstein is Director for Science at World Wildlife Fund - US.
(ZooGoer 27(2) 1998. Copyright 1998 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.)
Tiger Facts
Great Cats (National Zoo Exhibit)
Tiger Tales (behind the scenes at Lion/Tiger hill)
