Split Project Tiger and Elephant, experts make their case

India logged a record 145 tiger deaths in the first nine months of 2023; the country has also lost 494 elephants to train accidents, electrocution, poaching, and poisoning in the past five years. (Photos: WWF India and NCF via Wikimedia Commons)

India logged a record 145 tiger deaths in the first nine months of 2023, up from 116 in 2022, 127 in 2021, and 106 in 2020, respectively, according to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).

The country has also lost 494 elephants to train accidents, electrocution, poaching, and poisoning in the past five years, the Union Environment Ministry told the Lok Sabha in December 2022, highlighting the challenges undermining elephant conservation efforts.

Despite these alarming trends, in April this year, India's Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) merged Project Tiger (PT) and Project Elephant (PE) into a new project called Project Tiger and Elephant (PTE). This decision has surprised and divided conservationists, who fear that splitting focus will weaken both flagship conservation programs.

Under PT, the big cat population in the country has more than tripled in the past 15 years, from 1,441 in 2008 to 3,682 in 2023. It is India’s biggest conservation success story. On the other hand, Project Elephant never got the importance it deserves. “Though launched in 1992, much before the human-elephant conflict escalated, we’ve lost a great opportunity to proactively insulate people from elephants, and vice versa. As a result, today, in India, over 400 people die due to wild elephant attacks annually and over 100 elephants die due to multiple anthropogenic reasons,” says Anish Andheria, president, Wildlife Conservation Trust.

Same but different

According to experts, the move to merge the two projects seems to have emerged from the need to activate PE using the learnings from PT. But while both species need space and good quality corridors to thrive, they are intrinsically very different.

The tiger is an elusive, solitary, low-density carnivore that lives in well-marked territories containing sufficient prey. Elephants, on the other hand, are large, herd-loving, high-density herbivores. As a result, they have unique needs, shaped by their different worlds. “Elephants, for example, need continuous access to grass and vegetation to avoid moving into human settlements and farms in search of food,” says Sai Venkat, an independent wildlife researcher, who has been working with elephants in Tamil Nadu for a decade.

And while tigers and elephants do share some habitat, conservationists say the overlap is not significant enough to merge the two projects. The species also face different threats. “For example, human-elephant conflict is a major issue in Maharashtra and Kerala. In Uttarakhand, elephants have recently been moving to higher altitudes than they were previously known to inhabit. Tigers, meanwhile, face unrelenting pressures from poaching. At the same time, several tiger reserves are nearing their carrying capacity,” says Venkat.

Tigers and elephants do share some habitat, but conservationists say the overlap is not significant enough to merge Project Tiger and Project Elephant.

Conservationists are concerned that the merger of PT and PE will lead to a loss of focus on specific needs, especially of elephants. “Contrary to popular belief, it is far more difficult to sustain elephant populations in India’s rapidly degrading ecosystems than it is to safeguard the tiger. The need of the hour is to strengthen PE by increasing funding by a couple of magnitudes, catalysing multi-sectoral convergence at the village level, making provisions for alternative cropping that is elephant-unfriendly, restoring degraded forest habitats and above all, encouraging behavioural change in people,” says Andheria. There is a feeling that the new merged project will not have the expertise to address these challenges.

Warnings ignored

Elephants are large, herd-loving, high-density herbivores with unique needs. (Photo: WWF India and NCF via Wikimedia Commons)

The Centre’s decision to merge PT and PE is also in contravention of an earlier National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) decision. Way back in 2011, there had been a proposal to merge three centrally funded projects – PT, PE, and Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats. Members of the NBWL had, however, opposed it, stating that such a move would adversely impact efforts to conserve wildlife and nature.

In August, wildlife conservationist Giridhar Kulkarni too wrote a letter to the Centre to rescind the merger order. “The unnecessary move of merging two divisions of the ministry defeats the purpose of creating statutory bodies like NTCA (National Tiger Conservation Authority), and it will have far-reaching implications for tiger conservation in India,” said Kulkarni in his letter.

Money matters

There is the matter of funding too. It is a key factor in the success or failure of any conservation project, so any change in allocation could have serious consequences. So far, there is no clarity on how the budget will be allocated to each species after the merger.

Records, however, show that the actual fund allocation for tiger conservation has been on the decline since 2018-19. It was Rs 350 crore in 2018-19, Rs 282.57 crore in 2019-20, Rs 195 crore in 2020-21, and Rs 220 crore in 2021-22. The amalgamated budget of both PT and PE schemes in 2023-24 is Rs 331 crore, down from the combined budgetary amount of Rs 335 crore in 2022-23. It is important to note though the actual fund released in 2022-23 for both projects, however, was only Rs 220 crore, about two-thirds of the allotted amount.

“Funds for PT were already dwindling, now they will be even harder to get. How can we patrol, protect forests, stop poaching and prevent human-animal conflict to safeguard the tiger without funds? Conservation will now get bogged down in the bureaucratic quagmire of the MoEFCC,” says a forest official, on the condition of anonymity.

There can be some positives. The NTCA has already been looking after leopards and rhinos for a long time in some areas, so adding elephants should not be a problem, if handled well. “Combining the two projects could allow for more efficient use of resources,” says Venkat. But not all agree. “For PE to succeed, a lot more effort and funding will be needed compared to what was awarded to PT. This is very different from merging the two entities. PT can mentor PE, but both need to function separately and unite in ecosystems where both these charismatic species coexist,” says Andheria.