For Indian tigers, Sariska is the new ground zero. Just 200 km from the national capital, India's premier Project Tiger reserve is now the scene of an unparalleled decimation of its most famous denizen. These days every morning Priyaranjan Sinha, Sariska's deputy director, sets out in his Maruti Gypsy to see if there are any pug marks or sightings of tigers. It is peak summer and this is the time the tigers usually come to the lower reaches of the reserve and wander around its valleys in search of prey. But there are no signs of the tiger's presence across this vast dry deciduous forest in the Aravalli ranges of Rajasthan. Rangers have not heard the alarm calls of langurs and deer that indicate that the king of the jungle is on the prowl and all animals must beware.

1,500 tigers have been poached in India in the past 10 years, the most in the world. 150 tigers, or the population in two national parks, are killed yearly. Rs 900 crore is what tiger poachers have earned since 1995. Rs 60 lakh is what each poached tiger is worth. The skin itself is sold for Rs 8.6 lakh. 2020 is when the Indian tiger will become extinct at this rate.

Every May the reserve is shut for the public as it is considered the best time for the annual head count of tigers. Last year there were indications that things were going terribly wrong when for the first time the census showed a sharp drop in numbers-from the usual 24- 28 tigers to 16-18. But forest officials hushed up the report blaming it on the excessive rains that wiped out pug marks and made the count incorrect. Next week when Sariska's field staff begins the annual census, for the first time since the reserve was set up in 1978, they are likely to report that there are no tigers in its 866 sq km of jungle. No pug marks have been reported for close to six months. The last sighting of a tiger was said to be in September 2004 by a tourist but that also could not be vouched for. Last month a CBI team, which was asked by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to investigate the falling numbers, reached the stunning conclusion that massive poaching in the past two years has wiped out the entire tiger population. B.K. Sharma, CBI deputy inspector-general in charge of the investigation, says: "What happened in Sariska is just a symptom of a larger disease afflicting tiger sanctuaries across the country."

HIGH PROFIT, LOW RISK Almost every body part of a tiger has its uses and fetches lucrative prices

TIGER BONE: In its powdered form it is used in over 100 prescriptions of Chinese traditional medicine and also in wine. Price $6,000 per kg SKIN: Used as a fashion accessory, for clothing and for displays as rugs and wall hangings. Price $20,000 per skin PENIS: Virility pills are made by soaking it in wine, drying it and then making it into a powder. Price $27,000 for a 100 gm box SKULL: Sold for mounting as trophies. Tiger collar bones are a symbol of power in China and believed to give a person mystical powers. Price $1,000 a skull FAT: Extracts from tiger's meat and fat are used for treating rheumatism. Price $100 a kg TEETH: Made into jewellery or sold as magical amulets and charms. As are its whiskers. Price $900 each

Now the alarm bells are clanging loud and clear. For if the tiger population could be wiped out in Sariska with such shocking ease, then what is the guarantee that the 28 tiger reserves and 90-odd national parks that harbour the magnificent beast have not been the target of poachers? The worst fears of wildlife experts are already being confirmed. All across the country's protected areas, there are enough signs of a deadly revival of tiger poaching. While official figures show only 26 cases of tigers being poached every year, experts from organisations such as the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) put the figure being wiped out annually at over 150, or the population of two national parks. By tracking seizure reports across the country, they found that 750 tiger skins have been seized in the past decade. For every skin seized, plenty usually go undetected. The WTI's conservative estimate puts the number of tigers killed since 1995 at a shocking 1,500. "The figure is probably much higher as we have no satisfactory system for monitoring poaching or data collection," says Ashok Kumar, the WTI's trustee and senior adviser. Last week the WTI filed an appeal with the Supreme Court to get the CBI to investigate reports of poaching in all tiger reserves across the country.

THE NEW VEERAPPAN

If Veerappan was known to have decimated tuskers in south India, Sansar Chand is charged with having traded in over 100 poached tigers in the past 20 years. In his mid-40s, Sansar Chand belongs to a family of fur traders and is said to have a wide network of contacts in India, Nepal and Tibet. He was first charged with tiger poaching in 1974. He was convicted in 1982 but appealed against his sentence and served an 18-month term only in 1994. Wanted in three states for 21 cases of tiger poaching, Sansar Chand is absconding and is said to be in Nepal.

The concern has not come a moment too soon. Even figures published by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) cannot conceal the steep decline in the tiger population. From a peak population of 4,334 tigers in the wild in 1989, it is now estimated to have dropped to 3,500. In Project Tiger reserves, which harbour 50 per cent of the tiger population, the figure is put at 1,600, recording a surprising increase of 200 tigers during the same period. But that figure is misleading, as it contains the population of 10 new reserves that have been added to the project since 1989. Now officials admit that at least a third of the reserves under Project Tiger have shown a worrying drop in the number of tigers. In Assam's Manas, the tiger population has dropped from 125 in 1997 to less than half that figure. Other project areas where numbers have been plummeting are Melghat in Maharashtra, Palamau in Jharkhand, Similipal in Orissa, Periyar in Kerala, Indravati in Chhattisgarh, Panna in Madhya Pradesh, Nagarjunasagar in Andhra Pradesh, Valmiki in Bihar and Dudhwa in Uttar Pradesh. Tiger expert Valmik Thapar says: "We have totally failed in our efforts to save the tiger. It's the last days of the tiger in many reserves unless we do something fast."

PICTURE SPEAK

WEAK AND MEEK: Poorly trained and ageing forest guards are the chinks

Worried by what happened in Sariska and the condition in the other reserves Manmohan appointed a Tiger Task Force (TTF) in April to spell out measures to help save the tiger. The prime minister was reportedly so upset by the MoEF's lackadaisical approach to the problem that its secretary Pradipto Ghosh got to know of the TTF only when the letter announcing its formation was faxed to him by the PMO. The TTF ran straight into controversy when Sunita Narain, director, Centre for Science and Environment, was named its chairperson. Narain, better known for her campaigns against soft drink manufacturers, admits that she has never seen a tiger in the wild. Wildlife experts are incensed at her lack of knowledge. Narain responds: "Despite what all the experts recommended in the past decade we have still come to this sorry pass. We need to think out of the box rather than shuffle around old ideas." The TTF would spend the next couple of months going into the management of such reserves.

What they would need to lay special focus on is enforcement. For as Belinda Wright, executive director, Wildlife Protection Society of India points out, "Wildlife crime is far more sophisticated than before. Poachers are well networked with cell phones, they have good legal back-up, the demand for tiger parts continues to be high and so is the payment. Next to narcotics it has emerged as the second most lucrative illegal trade in India." While no wildlife expert likes to reveal the figures, the estimates are that each tiger poached is now worth Rs 60 lakh (see graphic). The skin alone, which is used as a fashion accessory by Chinese businessmen or as a wall hanging by rich Arabs, can sell for as much as $20,000 (Rs 8.6 lakh). The tiger's penis is used to make aphrodisiacs by traditional Chinese medicine men and a bottle of 100 gm of virility pills made from it is sold for $27,000 (Rs 11.7 lakh) in Japan. Tiger bones, used for its medicinal properties, are sold for $6,000 (Rs 2.6 lakh) per kg in markets like South Korea. Not just that, there is demand for its blood, meat, skull, teeth, claws and even its whiskers. According to estimates poachers earned over Rs 900 crore by selling over 1,500 Indian tigers in the past 10 years.

THE SARISKA STORY: CONFESSIONS OF A POACHER

In Cold Blood   PICTURE SPEAK TIGER TRAPPER: Karan in jail after his arrest by a Sariska team Ram Karan does not fit the image of a tiger slayer at all. A frail-looking 28-year-old, only his large eyes occasionally reveal the cunning that may have gone behind slaying a beast three times his size. He displays little remorse as he narrates how in the first week of July 2004 he helped his wife's uncle Kalia, a notorious poacher of the region, to trap a tiger and kill it. Karan, who owns a few goats and stays in the adjoining district, claims he came to Sariska to visit Kalia along with his wife. One morning Kalia asked Karan to accompany him and four others to the jungle. There Kalia located pug marks. He then asked the others to help him set the iron and steel trap that snaps shut on the foot of the tiger when it steps on it. They concealed the trap among dead leaves and sand and waited nearby. The men drank local liquor and ate the food they had brought with them while they waited. When they returned to the trap early next morning, they found a large tigress ensnared in its jaws. It was in obvious pain and blood flowed from its paw. Kalia loaded his country-made musket and shot the tiger through the heart. Karan claims it was the first time he saw a tiger being shot and felt awful about it. But he was too scared to protest. Using knives the men slit the tiger's skin from neck downward, letting its guts spill all over the place. Karan says Kalia was the expert and he asked the others to hold the tiger's legs while he eased the skin away from the flesh using his knife. They then got down to the gruesome task of scraping the meat away from the tiger's skeleton and collecting all its bones. The group concealed the bones and the skin in sacks. It was over in an hour and a half and they returned to Kalia's house at the periphery of the sanctuary. After about a week, Karan says he was paid Rs 8,000. For him it was equivalent to a year's earning and he bought four goats with it. Karan was arrested by the Sariska Project Tiger team a week ago on a tip-off. The CBI inquiry earlier into the case had revealed that Kalia reportedly sold the skin to a middleman named Jeevan Kalbeliya for Rs 65,000. Kalbeliya then sold it to notorious Delhi poacher Sansar Chand. The CBI believes Kalia and his associates like Karan could operate so freely only with the connivance of the local Forest Department, which saw Sariska's tiger population being decimated in just a couple of years. -By Raj Chengappa in Sariska

In this period the network of Indian poachers with links to markets in Nepal, Tibet and mainland China have grown in strength and reach. Top among them is Delhi-based Sansar Chand who operates out of Sadar Bazar and is now considered the Veerappan of tiger poaching. Sansar Chand, who has studied up to Class X, has been accused in cases involving the poaching of over 100 tigers, not to mention hundreds of leopards and other wildlife. After being arrested last year, he was let off on bail and since then has been absconding. He faces five non-bailable warrants from different states and is believed to have crossed over to Nepal. His modus operandi is simple (see boxes on poacher and graphic). He hires local tribals, who collect information on tiger movements. He then lays a steel trap and snares tigers. It is then skinned and all valuable body parts are packed in gunny sacks and sold to representatives who export them to the mainland Chinese market via Tibet.

Much of the reason for the pressure on Indian tigers has been the steep drop in populations in ranges across the world. Traffic International, the wildlife trade monitoring network, reports that the once abundant Sumatran tiger is down to 400-500, the Siberian tiger has fallen to around the same numbers and the Chinese tiger is down to an unviable 30. Since 1940 three sub-species of the tiger have become extinct. India continues to have the largest population, accounting for almost 50 per cent of the tigers in the world. Last year, the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) made a stunning film called The Tiger Skin Trail that graphically recorded how the trade in tiger skins has shot up with India being the main hub for poachers. Debbie Banks, EIA's senior campaigner, says, "There are serious criminals running the trade which remains a high-profit, low-risk business. With a clear lack of coordination among India, Nepal and China- the major route for smuggling tiger parts-poaching has escalated."

INTERVIEW | VASUNDHARA RAJE

"Sariska is a disaster. But we will not hide anything." Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje spoke to India Today on the crisis at Sariska. Q. What went wrong in Sariska? A. Sariska is a disaster. But nothing could have happened overnight. It is a systemic failure. For us the most important thing was to get a task force with the best brains on wildlife to come up with solutions. This is not to get us off the hook or hide anything that might come up. It is important to recognise the problem and face it. Q. Are you okay with the CBI team investigating at Sariska? A. Normally the Central Government should not institute any CBI inquiry in a state without the concurrence of the state government. But it does not matter because this is an issue that is very important for me and my conscience is clear. Q. What have you done in the meanwhile? A. Transfers and suspensions are not the answer to this problem since the malaise is much more deep-rooted. The poaching by Sansar Chand, who does not live in the state, is of the same level as that by Veerappan in a fashion. So this is an all-India problem. Q. Are you going to do anything to end the human disturbance in the sanctuary? A. The temple and the highway did not come up yesterday. They have been there for a long time, just like the villages inside the sanctuary. There has been no political will so far to tackle it. I would be happy to clean up the mess but it is unfair to expect that I have a magic wand.

If Sansar Chand and his ilk are having a field day it is because most Project Tiger reserves are ill-equipped to deal with the poachers. Rajesh Gopal, director of Project Tiger, admits the average age of forest guards is now above 45 and many of them just don't have the agility to track down poachers. That is primarily because of a freeze on fresh recruitment for two decades in most states. "We need young blood to track and catch offenders," points out G.S. Bhardwaj, deputy director of Ranthambore National Park, where the average age of guards is above 50 years. Worse, a third of the posts for guards and range officers in most reserves are vacant. Most of the guards are ill-equipped to do the job and do not have the fire power or expertise to investigate poachers. "Political commitment for wildlife conservation is lacking," says V.K. Thakur, field director of Dudhwa National Park.

THE CBI INQUIRY: DAMNING INDICTMENT The CBI report on Sariska submitted last month was a stunning reproof:

The estimates of tiger population over the years at the Sariska reserve have been grossly exaggerated. Between 1995 and 2003, official estimates stated that it had 24-28 tigers. In 2004, it was said to be between 16 and 18. That too was an exaggeration. From June 2002 to August 2004, there is clear evidence that at least 10 tigers were poached. Yet there were no arrests in the reserve by forest staff. No tiger has been sighted since September 2004. It is now extinct. The Forest Department was ill-equipped to prevent poaching. There has been no fresh recruitment of staff since 1987. Most of the guards are above 45 years of age. More than 75 per cent have not been trained to handle wildlife. There was an organised system of trading in tiger skins. Negligence of the Project Tiger staff in preventing extinction of tigers in the reserve is evident and overwhelming. There was a total collapse in intelligence machinery. Collusion needs further probe. There should be an administrative overhaul of the Sariska tiger reserve.

It is the same tale across the country. Madhya Pradesh is known as the tiger state for housing 711 tigers in its sanctuaries. But the state of its reserves, parks and sanctuaries have deteriorated over the past two decades. Panna National Park, for instance, has come under the scanner for merciless poaching and the tendency of its directors to exaggerate the tiger population. There is a popular joke in Panna: "Every park director gives birth to one tiger". The census is manipulated through liberal duplication of pug casts. There is suspicion that it is happening in other reserves too, prompting the Centre to come up with more scientific ways of estimating the tiger population. Says Ghosh, "We are going to make census operations more credible by introducing new technology and bringing in outside experts."

There are signs that those who matter have woken up to the threat. Eleven MPs, including Rahul Gandhi and Jyotiraditya Scindia, have set up the Tiger and Wilderness Group to act as a pressure group. The MoEF has set up an expert group to assess the management of the 28 tiger reserves. It has also been working on the problem of fragmentation of forests that is leaving tiger populations vulnerable to poachers. Meanwhile, the Rajasthan Government has appointed a committee to go into the problems of Ranthambore and Sariska and come up with solutions. Says V.P. Singh, chairman of the committee: "What is lost is gone. Now we must save what is left."

THE FIGHT BACK

Speedily set up the proposed National Wildlife Crime Bureau, a multi-agency police force. Special courts for quick disposal of cases also need to be established. Provide more resources to police the reserves by upgrading salaries of forest guards and training them to tackle poachers. Bring in latest scientific management techniques, including employing digital technology, to conduct tiger census. Get the tribals and local communities involved in conservation, protection as well as anti-poaching measures in national parks.

What urgently needs to be plugged, however, is the lax enforcement. The prime minister has approved in principle the setting up of a National Wildlife Crime Prevention and Control Bureau on the lines of the Narcotics Control Bureau which would have a multi-disciplinary and multi-force team to monitor all poaching activities and curb it. These would include representatives of the CBI, IB, local police and forest officials. Special wildlife courts could be set up to speed up trials and the law needs to be amended to make it a non-bailable offence. There is a need to appoint younger staff and equip them properly to battle poachers. There is also a suggestion to set up a National Parks Authority to oversee all wildlife reserves. People who live in and around parks must be involved in wildlife preservation and anti-poaching measures. If these measures are not taken up on a war footing within the next decade the Indian tiger could suffer the same fate of the cheetah-become extinct in the wild.

-with Rohit Parihar, Neeraj Mishra, Subhash Mishra,
Stephen David and Arun Ram

TIGER CENSUS

Bungle in the Jungle Given that the tiger is probably the jungle's most secretive animal, just how does one count their numbers in a reserve? Since 1973, when Project Tiger was set up, foresters have been using the technique of recording pug mark impressions. Much like the human hand, each tiger's pug marks are unique. To get a clear impression, foresters spread soft sand on key jungle trails. Every morning when guards find pug marks, they first trace its outline on a sheet of paper and then take a plaster-cast impression of it. Pug marks of female tigers are elongated in shape while those of males are squarish. As a rule, only the left hind leg's pug marks are taken. Variations in the size of the pads and the distance between digits are used to identify individual tigers. Rangers are also asked to look for other proof such as reports of actual sightings and scratch marks on trees.   PICTURE SPEAK STEP 1: When the guards find pug marks, they first trace its outline on a sheet of paper STEP 2: The guards then take a plaster cast impression of the tiger's pug mark STEP 3: Each tiger's pug marks are unique. Size of the pads are used to identify them.   PICTURE SPEAK NEW WAY: Digital images of pug marks But the crisis at Sariska has put a big question mark on the credibility of census figures based solely on the pug mark technique. There is a high chance of double counting and worse, even deliberate falsification. In Karnataka's tiger reserves wildlife biologist Ullas Karanth was among the first to adopt advanced techniques such as radio-collaring of tigers and using hidden cameras triggered by infrared beams to photograph them. In Ranthambore National Park, the Wildlife Protection Society of India is using digital imaging photography of pug marks to eliminate human errors by getting a computer to determine the unique characteristics of a tiger's footprints. Experts say a combination of these techniques including plaster cast impressions would enhance reliability of census figures considerably.

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