00:00 It's 6 o'clock in the morning in the Pench Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh.
00:06 The big cats are out there somewhere, here in this untamed wilderness.
00:16 Anish Andheria is a nature conservationist.
00:20 No one knows the tigers as well as he does.
00:24 He immediately spots their tracks.
00:27 They tend to be close to streams and ponds.
00:30 So tigers are water babies.
00:34 You seldom see them far away from perennial waters.
00:38 And so they are really an indicator of the health of the forest.
00:41 If the forest is degraded, you will not have perennial water bodies.
00:46 The streams will dry out and therefore you won't have a high density prey and therefore
00:51 you don't have tigers.
00:53 A large part of the tiger's habitat has been lost due to human activity.
00:58 Three quarters of the world's wild tigers still live in India.
01:02 But their population has drastically decreased, from more than 50,000 in the 19th century
01:09 to less than 300 in the 1970s.
01:16 That's when the government stepped in and launched Project Tiger, setting up protected
01:21 areas.
01:25 Mostly the core of all tiger reserves are either sanctuaries or national parks.
01:29 So by law, you can't have human disturbance there.
01:35 In the initial stages, people were just lifted and moved.
01:40 And at that point, you know, there was violation in human rights and all that.
01:46 That's early, in the 70s and 80s.
01:49 Things look very different today.
01:51 The indigenous communities can remain in the forests where their ancestors once lived.
01:57 And they play an important role in tiger conservation efforts.
02:01 Shishupal Enwati belongs to the Gond tribe and lives in a village in the reserve.
02:07 He's been working for the Forestry Authority since 2006 and earns around Rs 12,000 a month,
02:14 the equivalent of around 130 euros.
02:18 His job is to patrol the entire area and educate locals about tigers and their habitat.
02:28 In the past, the villagers didn't know any better and put up electric fences to keep
02:31 out sambar deer and other animals.
02:34 But then tigers would get trapped in them.
02:36 There were bad accidents.
02:37 Sometimes they would even put traps out or poison the water bodies.
02:40 They even hunted the tigers.
02:43 But since I've been working here, there have been fewer incidents.
02:46 I'm in the jungle every day and I've seen tiger numbers go up.
02:55 The local communities have always been dependent on the forest and what grows in it.
03:00 Banning them from it would mean cutting them off from their livelihood.
03:05 In the 1990s, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in Madhya Pradesh
03:10 set up so-called Eco-Development Committees or EDCs.
03:15 The goal was to integrate locals into wildlife conservation projects, which would also help
03:21 supply them with an income.
03:27 In Pains Tiger Reserve, I have 130 EDCs.
03:30 And whatever tourism revenue we generate in a year, one third goes to these communities.
03:36 They also have been employed in most of the activities which we carry out inside.
03:41 So some of them are like permanent workers with us and many of them, a huge number of
03:47 them do this casually.
03:50 Wildlife tourism in Madhya Pradesh makes a significant contribution to the economy.
03:55 Shantabai has benefited from its growth.
03:58 With the help of funding from the Forest Department, she set up a small canteen.
04:04 Many locals who used to fear the tigers now feel grateful to them.
04:13 Every year we give tigers an offering of chicken and coconuts.
04:17 We worship them and we keep a rock as a symbol and worship it.
04:20 For the Adivasi, the tiger is a god.
04:23 And now they even provide us with livelihood.
04:25 If it weren't for people coming here from all over the world to see them, we wouldn't
04:29 have an income.
04:35 The forestry officers are out on patrol every day, tracking the tigers' routes.
04:40 They use wildlife cameras to record and document their movements.
04:45 Again and again, they observe that roads are a huge problem, slicing directly through the
04:50 animal's habitat.
04:55 We have seen that females that lived on the other side seldom ever moved on this side.
05:01 Males would cross once in a while, but largely these populations were segregated.
05:05 So this is how the corridors get fragmented.
05:09 Once fragmentation happens, there is inbreeding on both sides.
05:12 It can escalate conflict because if animal movement stops on one side and if the prey
05:18 population on the other side goes down because there is no movement, then tigers will go
05:24 and start hunting cattle.
05:26 That will increase conflict.
05:29 Underpasses like these protect the animals' natural routes.
05:34 There are 23 of them in Madhya Pradesh alone, and they are urgently needed.
05:39 A third of India's most important tiger corridors run through the state, but the conservation
05:45 efforts benefit other species too.
05:49 It's not that tigers are more important than the birds or the monkeys or a termite, but
05:55 tigers become a pivot around which all the conservation efforts can be focused.
06:01 So if you want to protect them, you will have to protect large areas with ample of water.
06:08 And if you do that, automatically you will be able to protect so many different species.
06:15 Project Tiger was founded in Madhya Pradesh 50 years ago.
06:19 Thanks to its hard work, tiger numbers have recovered.
06:23 There are now over 3,000 of them in India.
06:27 (birds chirping)
06:29 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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