WILDLIFE'S BLIND SPOTS

IN INDIA, ICONS MATTER. THIS IS BOTH AN advantage and a disadvantage. During my two tenures as Director of Wildlife Preservation of India in the 1970s and 1980s, I leveraged the charisma of the tiger and the snow leopard to protect their diverse habitats and all other wildlife within them, under the projects named after these species. Other iconic and endangered species—the gharial, Gangetic dolphin, blackbuck, Nilgiri tahr, lesser florican, great Indian bustard, Tibetan gazelle, and others—were also used to establish specific protected areas.

- DR M.K. RANJITSINH

By protecting these species and their habitats, we aimed to safeguard all other creatures that shared these spaces. Sadly, many of our compatriots have yet to grasp a crucial truth: we can have wilderness without wild animals, but we cannot have wild animals without wilderness. We can only ogle at them in safari parks and zoos, which our governments are currently encouraging.

In the past, hunters in both British and princely India killed a staggering number of carnivores and other animals. However, even after the Independence, there were still more tigers, leopards, and other animals than there are now, over half a century after the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972 and Project Tiger of 1973. And that was because, despite the slaughter of tigers and others in pre-Independence India, the habitats, their ecological security, and the prey base had remained secure and safe.