For conservation, time to look beyond the tiger

If you love the golden-black stripes of the regal tiger, you will also appreciate the iridescent feathers, sparkly eyes, swishing tails, and melodious whistles that dot our forests. And so, during National Wildlife Week, I urge you to celebrate and cherish the diversity beyond our national animal.

- Sanket Bhale

The tiger is an umbrella or flagship species. They usually have large territories and disperse widely when looking for new territories and mates, The tiger also requires healthy prey populations and suitable habitats that can support these populations. As a consequence, the conservation of tigers leads to the protection of large tracts of forests and the conservation of their prey species and co-predators. This perspective has enabled wildlife recovery across a wide range of landscapes. But the diversity of our country’s landscapes demands a diversity of perspectives.

Wolves, bustards, floricans, black-bucks, and wild asses are flagships for their respective grassland habitats. Lion-tailed macaques, clouded leopards, and great hornbills are indicators of the dense tropical forests of the Western Ghats and Northeast India. Snow leopards, of course, are the apex predators of the Trans-Himalayas. Elephants, woodpeckers, fiddler crabs, and dung beetles, wherever they are present, act as ecosystem engineers, sustaining the landscapes. Even in the tiger heartlands of central India, there are gaur, barasingha, vultures, and flying squirrels that can serve as flagships for the dry deciduous forests.