Corbett Tiger Reserve: In the belly of the beast - Part 1

Every morning, Rajni and Pinky - two teenagers - carry water, towel, a few biscuits and an extra set of clothes in their backpacks for a long haul in India’s largest Corbett Tiger Reserve.

They are among the new lot of forest guards who have completed their training in Uttarakhand’s Haldwani town, 52km from the wildlife park.

The two are on probation. In the blistering heat, Rajni and Pinky - accompanied by a senior who carries a gun - and a few more guards scour parts of the forest to check the status of wild animals and birds.

They are - actually - in the belly of the beasts.

Pinky and Rajni are newly trained forest guards, on probation at Corbett.

It is a high-risk job, but the two find it very challenging, and probably better than pushing pens in the office. Among the biggest challenges is to face a tiger in the wild, or a tusker, even wild boars. “We haven’t faced tigers in close proximity but there have been many occasions when we have faced a herd of elephants,” says Rajni.

And then?

“We both ran as fast as we could. There is no way you can save yourself from elephants,” says Pinky. She has seen Sherni on Amazon Prime Video, a grim and uncomfortable reminder of the pitfalls of wildlife conservation. The movie showed how poorly armed forest guards bound by stringent guidelines are pitted against poachers and villagers with no rules.

Also read: World Wildlife Day 2022: Tiger conservation, and the Tx2 project

“But things have changed, we are the new custodians of the forest and we are well trained to handle any crisis,” says Rajni. Soon they will be trained to operate firearms. Then they will carry powerful, single barrel guns on patrol.

“It is the job of the forest ranger to save Corbett’s wildlife,” says Rajni, while sharing with her colleague a frugal meal of daal, a mishmash of potatoes and onions, and rotis (flatbread).

Most of them do not have walkie-talkies, as it is reserved for emergencies in Corbett. The reserve does not have jungle drums to convey a message faster (like the tribals have in Chhattisgarh). The guards can only wait for help to arrive, or run to get help. It is not easy in a forest where handsets do not work, lights powered by solar panels go out around midnight and you cannot flash a torchlight on an animal. You need to be patient, you need to wait.

“I must be super alert, I must know every inch of the jungle. It is my job,” says Ram Singh, another forest guard.

The guards work in two shifts during the day, 6-10am and 2.30-4.30pm. They walk more than 12 km every day. It is the time when green-coloured Gypsy vehicles packed with tourists crisscross the forest in search of wildlife.

The movement of the forest rangers is well-timed, if there is a crisis in the forest, a vehicle could always be found to seek help. The rangers do not go on rounds at night. At the forest rest houses, both tourists and guards huddle behind electrified fences meant to keep the big cats and elephants away.

Forest rangers say the number of elephants has increased to 1,224 as per the 2021 count. The number of tigers has also been increasing in the reserve; currently it stands at 231, as per figures released by the Indian government in 2019. The tiger census report released in 2019 used thousands of camera traps, tracking carnivore signs across 150,000 square miles. The report said India’s total tiger population rose to 2,967 in 2018, about 700 more than in 2014.

There are only 4,000 tigers left in the wild. The WWF says since the start of the 20th century, over 95 percent of the world's tiger population has been lost.

In India, Corbett has the highest tiger density among India’s 50 tiger reserves - with 14 tigers per sq km. “Our responsibility is huge, it is immense as compared to other tiger reserves,” says Samir Sinha, additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest, Uttarakhand Forest Department. Sinha, a former director of Corbett Tiger Reserve, adds the state’s forest department is encouraging new ideas to secure the safety of animals and birds of the reserve.

For the forest rangers, it is all about education and awareness, it is about demarcating wildlife constituencies. It is a Herculean task.

Sinha says the forest department has recruited over 1,100 forest guards, and another 600 vacancies are to be filled soon.

“The guards are the backbone of the tiger reserve, they are working overtime. It is a great transformation we are witnessing in the tiger reserve,” says Sinha.

The guards are on watch throughout India’s oldest national park, which occupies an area of 521 sq. km. It is a part of the larger Corbett Tiger Reserve, which includes adjacent protected areas and has a total of 1,288 sq. km of dense forest land.

The forest guards have been divided between the reserve’s five zones, namely Brijrani, Jhirna, Dhela, Dhikala and Durga Devi.

“They have been trained to be alert, trained to prevent any mishap inside the forest. Earlier, forest guards took a lot of blame for animal-human conflict. But now, the situation has changed a lot. Trained guards understand the reserve much better,” says Rahul, the current director of Corbett Tiger Reserve.

“Many young girls from the state are joining the service because they feel it is their job to protect the tiger reserve,” adds Rahul.

Corbett is always in the news.

There have been reports of elephant-tiger conflict in the reserve. In the last four years, as many as 11 elephants have been killed by tigers in Corbett. These are trends that the forest rangers need to watch, and analyse why such killings are happening and whether it is happening because of proximity of elephants near the usual habitat of tigers.

The guards are also at risk. As many as 12 guards have been killed by the big cats in the last two decades, some of the animals identified as man eaters and removed from the reserve.

A few months ago, a tiger attacked and killed a mentally deranged person close to the Dhangari zone, considered the main gateway to the forest.

“We observed the animal for a few months and came to the conclusion that the tiger was not a man eater. It felt threatened when accosted by the person and attacked in self-defence,” says a ranger.

There is a saying in Corbett: A tiger kills a human being because it runs 'less faster' than a deer. It is important to stay away from the wild cats and allow them to breed in their natural habitat.

Corbett is a top-end, widely popular wildlife reserve.

There are many stories about the forests and its wild occupants. Old-timers in Corbett talk about an incident where a top Bollywood actor was seen by forest rangers shooting deer from a chopper that flew close to a herd. Then the chopper crash landed and was mounted on a huge truck, covered with a huge tarpaulin sheet and silently taken out of the reserve. “There was a Bollywood star and his industrialist friends from Delhi. But the incident was hushed up,” says a Corbett veteran.

The retired forest ranger said he had heard similar cases of shooting deer by a top Indian shooter during Christmas and New Year on the outskirts of Corbett. Again, nothing happened to the wildlife violators.

Corbett has been in the news for all kinds of reasons, including the poaching of seven tuskers that rattled the forest in 2000-1.

A Bollywood supernatural movie, Kaal, was shot inside the reserve in 2004. And in 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi teamed up with survivalist Bear Grylls and braved the rain and cold of the Corbett reserve for a Discovery channel’s show.

Ramganga,Corbett Tiger Reserve @ReserveCorbett https://t.co/XthH0sTvFS

— Rahul (@IfsRahul) February 6, 2021

Wildlife experts say better safety monitoring and stricter wildlife policies have helped the tiger population grow to its largest in over two decades. In 2019, while releasing the tiger census figures, Modi had said: “Once the people of India decide to do something, there is no force that can prevent them from getting the desired results.”

The forest guard in Corbett is no longer hapless. Properly armed, a team of six to eight guards scour hundreds of square kilometres of forests, looking for clues that can lead them to animals. They need to walk because seeking vehicles for all forest guards would be asking for too much from the Uttarakhand government.

“The transformation of Corbett is the biggest achievement of the forest guards, they are at the forefront of it,” adds Sinha.

It’s almost 9.30pm at the Sarapdauli forest rest house. A very soft strain of music wafts across the forest rest house. Inside their one-room home, Rajni and Pinki are listening to songs loaded on their handsets.

It is their only entertainment.

Rest is the sound of the forest. It has already grown on the two. It only breaks when the tiger roars, only the king of the jungle is the disruptor.

Then, it is the music of alarm, the music of panic, the music of death. It is just a balancing act of nature.

In Corbett, it is called life.

(To be continued)

Photographs and videos by Aslam Khan