What are the projects that the trust is working on in India?
WLT has been working with the Wildlife Trust of India since 2003. Our joint programme was set up to fundraise and help save critically important "Elephant Corridors" throughout the country. In 2005 WTI published a book called Right of Passage which comprehensively mapped out 88 elephant corridors throughout India which they deemed to be critical for the survival of the Asian Elephant in India. These Elephant Corridors, if protected, will safeguard a network of forest corridors that will enable Indian Elephants and other animals, such as tigers, to move safely between protected areas, avoiding human-wildlife conflict and protecting continuous critical wildlife habitat.
Elephants are nomadic and their ecology is defined by the fact that they move from one location to another in order to find enough food, water and mating partners. Inevitably, in a country with over 1.2 billion people and rapidly developing infrastructure, this means that elephants and other wildlife species such as tiger, leopard and bear, frequently roam within landscapes dominated by human habitations, agricultural lands, busy roads and railways and industrial developments. In India, elephants act as a "flagship species" for our programme but in reality, saving an elephant corridor protects important habitats for a wealth of other wildlife species. The aim of the elephant corridors programme is to safeguard some of these important routes so wildlife can continue to co-exist with people. Often the solutions are complex, politicised and extremely expensive but WLT believes that India's wildlife is too precious to ignore this challenge.
Are you trying to raise funds for any project? What is it?
At present WLT is raising critical funding for the Chilkiya-Kota elephant corridor in the state of Uttarakhand. Once protected, the corridor will permanently connect Corbett Tiger Reserve and Ramnagar Forest Division along a traditional wildlife route. Its proximity to Corbett Tiger Reserve, home to the highest density of tigers in the world harbouring around 8% of India's entire Bengal Tiger population, makes the Chilkiya-Kota corridor a priority for conservation.
Over the last three years, nine people are known to have been killed by tigers in and around the Chilkiya-Kota corridor and countless livestock have been lost to both tiger and leopard. Elephants also cause severe difficulties for local people settled within the corridor through trampling and raiding of croplands. In a country with more than a billion people, it is vital that any conservation initiative in India also involves local communities. The WLT-WTI Elephant Corridors project benefits not only wildlife but also villagers by reducing human-wildlife conflict.
The corridor encompasses one village divided into three segments, and the project has been designed in three phases. WLT and WTI are supporting phase 1, which concentrates on the voluntary relocation of around 50 families from the Panod section of the corridor; the area with the highest density of human-wildlife conflict.
The Uttarakhand forestry department is extremely supportive of protecting Chilkiya-Kota Corridor too and WLT-WTI's completion of phase 1 is likely to act as leverage for funding and support from various state and national government agencies to complete phases 2 and 3 which would see the families from Sunderkhal and Devichaur sections of the corridor safely relocated away from the human-wildlife conflict zone.
Phase I of the project will see WLT fund the purchase of the alternate land for the Pannod villagers to move to. The villagers themselves will select the site they wish to relocate to and once the land has been bought WTI will also coordinate the building of the new village, complete with much improved dwellings, equivalent amounts of agricultural land and infrastructure such as roads and electricity. In the meantime, funds will also be required to help rehabilitate the Pannod section of the corridor to native habitat and to ensure regular patrols and wildlife monitoring of the area can be carried out by WTI and the Uttarakhand Forestry Department.
The project is extremely ambitious. The cost of land in this area is the highest WLT has ever spent on any land acquisition project worldwide; driven upwards by India's rapidly developing economy and the mountainous nature of the landscape meaning that suitable sites for the location are at a premium. WTI needs to raise approximately £800,000 more towards Phase I of the project and WLT intends to continue fundraising to help plug this gap (WLT has already committed £273,000 to this project). In addition we were much buoyed in 2013 to hear of the new law in India stating that any profit making business must donate 2% of profits to charity. We sincerely hope that this will increase WTI's level of corporate support in-country and that support will be forthcoming towards securing the Chilkiya-Kota corridor and WTI's other important programmes.
At present WLT's is raising critical funding for the Chilkiya-Kota Elephant Corridor.
What do you think are the most threatened animals or habitats in India?
At WLT we concentrate on saving threatened habitats rather than supporting species-specific projects that can be very focussed on expensive research and breeding programmes. WLT believe that positive action to save an ecosystem will preserve wildlife assemblages dependent upon that habitat and, more importantly, retain landscape connectivity to leverage unquantifiable benefits to wildlife. In India, WLT works in all three of the Biodiversity Hotspots identified by Conservation International: The Western Ghats and Sri Lanka Hotspot; The Eastern Himalaya Hotspot and; The Indo-Burma Hotspot.
Biodiversity hotspots are described as being "the richest and most threatened reservoirs of plant and animal life on Earth" yet despite this, these areas face grave threats from development programmes including development of power stations, mining, and the expansion of human settlements. WLT's two priority projects are currently focussed on an elephant corridor in Uttarakhand between the Corbett Tiger Reserve and Ramnagar Forest Division and in Meghalaya's Garo Hills tribal region where an ambitious project named Garo Green Spine Conservation Project aims to secure elephant corridors and restore degraded habitat surrounding Nokrek and Balphakram National Parks has been underway for some years with plans for its expansion in 2015 and beyond.
In India, elephants act as a "flagship species" for our projects but in reality, saving an elephant corridor protects important habitats for a wealth of wildlife. For example, the critically endangered Gharial has been recorded in the rivers of and surrounding Corbett tiger reserve where WLT's priority elephant corridor project is located. In Meghalaya elephant corridors also provide extremely important habitat for the Western Hoolock Gibbon which was listed on the list of the World's 25 most endangered primates, 2006-2008 (published by IUCN's Species Survival Commission Primate Specialist Group). Its situation hasn't improved since its 2008 listing; rather the opposite, but the list now features primates considered even more-threatened that the Hoolock.
In 2011 the ministry of environment and forests published a booklet detailing the 57 Critically Endangered species in India. By December 2013 IUCN published a new list of CR bird species in India adding two more to the 2011 list of 13 CR bird species. Therefore it is highly likely that more than 57 species of Indian wildlife are listed CR today.
Both the Asian Elephant and Bengal Tiger are listed as endangered in India and it is clear that the threats they face are ever increasing. The onslaught of the illegal ivory trade is a grave threat to India's elephants especially as only some males possess tusks meaning that the strongest and most sexually-viable males, favoured by females for reproduction are being systematically eradicated. The immediate effect is skewed male-female sex ratios in some landscapes where poaching is rife. The longer-term effect this will have on the robustness of the species as a whole remains to be seen.
Of the five tiger subspecies managing to hang on in the wild, the most numerous is the Bengal Tigernow confined to India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan with a population close to 2,300. Registered as Endangered by IUCN, all five sub-species of tiger face extinction in the wild unless urgent action is taken. The Bengal Tiger is also faced with aggressive levels of poaching throughout its range, primarily to satisfy the illegal trade in tiger body parts for traditional Chinese medicine. Poachers are ever better equipped with the latest technology to track down tigers whilst remaining undetected themselves. This is one of the very real, conflictual frontiers that conservationists are dealing with.
Tigers are present in all the areas in which WLT has supported elephant corridors; Kerala's Western Ghats, Meghalaya's Garo Hills and Uttarakhand's Corbett landscape. Indeed, they are frequently sighted but there is also severe conflict when tigers cross human-dominated landscapes.
Are there any plans that the trust has to save tribes?
The Garo Hills of Meghalaya is a tribal area and also home to a 60% majority of the 1,860 Asian elephants that roam Meghalaya's upland terrain. A total of 22 elephant corridors were identified in NE India including in the state of Meghalaya where tribal communities' autonomous district councils still control over 92% of the forest habitats that the Elephants rely upon.
Another ambitious project WLT has on its radar (not yet developed in its entirety) is to consolidate the work done to secure elephant corridors in Garo Hills so far and expand the project to protect a great deal more threatened habitat surrounding and connecting Nokrek and Balphakram National Parks.
What is your most ambitious project in India?
The Corbett project is bigger than any we've tackled in India before. With land prices as high as £20,000/acre and expectations from villagers to be resettled the budget is huge. Equally, in the future, the Garo Hills Green Spine project will be hugely ambitious. A more innovative approach is required to protect land in this area as tribal communities voluntarily set aside crucial wildlife corridor areas in return for eco-developmental support. WLT is planning to establish a "Payments for Ecosystem Services" (PES) project in Garo Hills that can provide long-term finance for village supports and thus ensure the longevity of the newly protected areas created under this scheme. The budget is highly likely to run to millions of pounds.
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