The loss of tourism is threatening the survival of India's iconic tigers

Can tourism save the tiger? It’s a question that’s been asked over and over again in the last two decades, as India has coupled its conservation policies to revenues from overseas as well as domestic visitors.

Ecotourism is embryonic in India. It is under-researched, underfunded, and it’s hard – especially for locals – to see where “greenwashing” ends and useful, sustainable practices benefit the most needy. Success for a business can mean stresses for wildlife, most notably tigers in India’s 50 dedicated reserves.

According to big cat charity Panthera, there are about 3,900 tigers are left in the wild, occupying a mere four percent of their former range. Around 3,000 of these reside in India, as do small populations of other threatened felines, including the snow leopard, Indian leopard, clouded leopard and Asiatic lion.

Since March 2020, much of Asia has been cut off from European travellers. The UK air corridor list currently sanctions travel to Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos and Sri Lanka. Of these, only Cambodia allows entry to foreign visitors. If the status quo persists, and ecotourism is not allowed even a toe-hold during the post-monsoon peak, which runs until March, the consequences for wildlife, habitats and local people could be very dire indeed.

Conservation biologist Raghu Chundawat runs the The Sarai at Toria hotel with his partner, wildlife filmmaker Joanna van Gruisen. Based at the Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh – which has taken its tiger population from zero to more than 50 in a decade – he has been researching and writing about big cats since 1995.

“Three quarters of our business comes from international visitors and Covid-19 has impacted our business severely,” he says. “The uncertainty about the future is also not helping businesses. So far we have continued to employ and pay all staff; we hope that some flow from domestic travellers will keeping us going until normal level travel resumes.”

The hotel supports a wildlife trust, BAAVAN, which co-conducted a survey into the four main tiger reserves in Central India. The report found the tiger reserve management receive more from entry fees than from the federal government.

While almost 80 per cent of visitors to India’s tiger reserves are domestic travellers, their expenditure is usually limited to a safari vehicle, guide and entry fee.

“Their contribution to the local economy is limited,” says Raghu. “The international traveller, on the other hand, needs wide-ranging services and therefore contributes a substantially larger amount to the local economy.

“The impact is mainly on the businesses, the many people in the local community whose livelihoods are dependant on the tourism industry and the charity work that is supported by these businesses.

“The Panna tiger reserve itself may not be seeing any significant negative impact from the international travel ban. But in other areas, the drop in livelihoods has resulted in an increase in poaching for meat.

“If the ban on travel continues, it will be devastating for us; we are desperately looking forward to vaccine introduction and resumption of a normal travel environment.”

The Tadoba Andhari tiger reserve in Maharashtra state supports 115 tigers and 151 leopards, as well as sloth bears, hyena, civets, marsh crocodile and the endangered Indian python.

Its “buffer ecotourism” model is run with the active involvement of local village eco-development committee. Such large-scale participation of local people has not been seen in other parks, says Aditya Amrut Dhanwatay, a naturalist and conservationist who co-owns TigerTrails jungle lodge.

“Ecotourism in buffer villages has given alternative livelihoods to villagers. Over 150 safari jeeps and 250 guides from these villages are involved in running tourism activity. Apart from guides and safari jeeps driven by locals, other activities like camping sites, boating, kayaking, machan stays, diorama, butterfly garden and adventure sports have generated additional livelihood for 100-150 local youths.

“Out of the total charges collected, 70 per cent directly goes to the villagers’ account.”

Aditya’s lodge and services directly fund the Chichghat Conservancy, on the western boundary on the tiger reserve, providing habitat management, protection, conservation programs, in situ conservation, patrolling and monitoring of wildlife movements.

“Till March it was business as usual before the first lockdown was enforced and afterwards through a series of tough lockdowns,” he says.

“The past eight months have been hard on the people now dependent on tourism and its allied activities. Hotels are shut, suppliers without orders, staff without work, pay or gratuities. The park has also had a loss of income due to no visitors and subsequent budgetary cuts in the state-sponsored schemes.

“What is more difficult to comprehend is that nobody understands how long it will take to go back to pre March 2020 standards.”

Ecotourism, he says, protects not only the talismanic cats, but vast ecosystems and communities.

“Living with large predators as your neighbours is easier when your livelihood depends on these wild cats being alive, and being able to earn your daily living from them. This has been a key reason why so many tiger parks in India have found it so much easier to protect them, than those that have not had this monetary economy to help conserve them.”

“The futures of the animals that inhabit the forests and the stakeholders that live around these forests are intertwined. Sustainability is defined as a win-win situation for both, and if tourism is not allowed to continue neither of them will be able to survive.”

It’s easy to be sceptical about ecotourism, but it’s one of the fastest growing tourism sectors in India – a global biodiversity hotspot that covers just 2.4 percent of the world’s land mass but contains around 7-8 per cent of all its recorded species. In a country of between 1.3 and 1.4 billion people, nature reserves are a sliver of hope for vulnerable species, says Dr Simon Evans, a specialist in tourism and environmental issues at Anglia Ruskin University.

“Space is a scarce resource in India, with protected areas tending to be considerably smaller than their African counterparts, containing poorer human populations living both inside and on the immediate periphery of the parks. Many such communities have historically removed forest products as a means by which to supplement their livelihoods and this has brought them into close contact with dangerous wildlife.

“Incidents of both humans and livestock being killed by tigers is rising as wildlife numbers have grown at the same time as the protected land area has contracted and fragmented. This has led to escalating human-wildlife conflict and also conflict between human communities and protected area officials.”

He says many local people do not yet benefit from tourism, and career progression is limited. But homestays and other ventures are improving the “patchy relationship” between local communities, government-run reserves and privately run tourism operations.

“The role of tourists as informal ‘police’ – as an early warning system to the presence of poachers – has been missed and there are various reports of increased poaching in some parks. An additional problem is the fact that as tourism-related revenue streams have contracted, people are once again encroaching on forests to meet livelihood needs. This has involved an increasing offtake of prey species bringing locals into additional conflict with carnivores.”

Meanwhile, the tigers wait, quietly – as do the thousands of workers, guides, scientists and stakeholders.

“We would like British travellers to visit us as soon as a normal travel environment is established,” says Raghu.  “We do hope that their travel is made safe soon. In the current environment, lodges like ours provide some of the safest accommodation since our rooms are all independent, our community dining and eating areas are open, our areas spacious enough to allow social distancing and our activities mainly undertaken individually and in the open air. Also, to date there have been far fewer Covid cases in these rural areas.”

Thanks to Inside Asia, Naturetrek, Transindus, Travel Local and their local agencies for assisting with this report.

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