Pursuit of the bright trail

Panna Tiger Reserve, spread over an area of 576 sq km in the Vindhya Hills of Panna and Chhatarpur district of Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh, made international media headlines in February 2009 when the park authorities officially declared as having lost its last tiger. Amid all-round criticism, the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the Government of India, constituted a four-member Special Investigating Team (SIT) headed by the former Director of Project Tiger, Mr PK Sen, in March 2009 to investigate the reasons for the loss of tigers. The SIT submitted its report in June 2009. It blamed the loss of tigers is largely due to poaching, and not any ecological reasons. It castigated the park managers for neglecting the basic management tenets of how to protect and manage the wildlife. The report stated that the department ignored the warnings of the Wildlife Institute and had no intelligence network to track poachers in the thickly populated surrounding villages. Ironically, the Ministry of Tourism gave the 'Award of Excellence' to this Tiger Reserve in 2007 when the tigers were being seemingly poached. I had visited the Panna Tiger Reserve during the preparation of the Bundelkhand package in 2009 and did notice the poor condition of the park. I again visited the park on February 24 and 25 in 2021 and found a sea change in its condition. The disappearance of tigers and their coming back in good numbers during the last 12 years proved the point that there is no alternative to hard work and professional dedication in managing the wildlife habitat. It was a wake-up call for the foresters and the government to pump in more resources and to streamline the wildlife management strategy in the country.

After the hue and cry in 2009, the state initiated reintroduction of tigers by translocation of two females and one male tiger from Kanha and Bandhavgarh, and since then, the tiger population has grown and now reached a figure of around 55 tigers. It is an example of how to get back the lost ground by sheer dint of hard work, dedication and innovative management interventions. The restoration process was also one of its kinds in the world for its 24-hour tracking of movement of tigers and studying their behaviour in relation to their home territory. The first male tiger, soon after release, started moving southward and was brought back after the hard work of foresters. The park is now back to life and this writer found its management in good shape, considering the overall ecological condition today. However, a detailed ecological rejuvenation assessment could not be undertaken by me in the private safari vehicle I used due to time constraint and imposed limitations. The fire lines have been well laid out and there is no fuel load on the forest floor in the tourism zone of Madla and adjoining forests. Waterholes have been created at several places to provide water for the wildlife in summer. The grasslands, as compared to Bandhavgarh, are particularly well-managed and in good shape and we could see several groups of cheetal, sambhar, langurs, rare birds and wild boars all over in the park. There are five vulture species in Panna, which are breeding very well, as at one place, we saw almost more than 100 vultures enjoying the sunbath. The park has more than 290 leopards as per the recent census, and we sighted a healthy male leopard.

The Panna Tiger reserve is 25 km away from the world-famous Khajuraho Temple town and has a rich historical and cultural legacy. It was declared as a National Park in 1981 and as a Tiger Reserve in 1994. It is dry deciduous forest with a fragmented undulating landscape and a series of high stiff cliffs (escarpments). The forest consists of natural Teak and Kardhai, covering both sides of Ken River which runs about 70 km in the park and is the lifeline of people of this ecologically difficult terrain. The Ken Gharial Sanctuary is also a part of the Panna National Park. The landscape is marked with undulating hillocks, waterfalls, beautiful gorges, historical and cultural legends; and crystal clear blue water of Ken River gives the landscape an unparalleled look, soothing to eyes and a paradise for the tourists. Apart from tiger and leopard, the wildlife consists of wild dogs, wolves, hyenas, sloth bears and other smaller animals of the cat family. Among the prey species cheetal, sambhar, chinkara, chowsingha, nilgai etc. are seen freely roaming in the grasslands. There are more than 200 bird species here mostly comprising of parakeets, peacocks, white-necked stork, bar-headed geese, honey buzzards, eagles, wood-peckers flycatchers and five species of vultures.

Apart from rich flora and fauna, Panna, culturally and religiously, is also famous and important for the followers of the Pranami Vaishnavism sect of Hindus which focuses on Lord Krishna, as the local Chatrasal king had patronized one of its propagators during religious persecution by Aurangzeb. With a variety of wildlife, rich bird fauna and a diamond mine located in the district, Panna, with its stories of Chhatrasal kings and the world-famous Khajuraho temple, is a paradise for the tourists, especially for the foreign tourists to explore and relax. The stream of water jutting out from the roots of exposed hillocks at the Raneh waterfall and Pandav caves lend credence to the sound management of this ecologically fragile area. The annual rainfall is more than 1,100 mm in Panna and other Bundelkhand areas but 95 per cent of it occurs only during monsoon and rest five per cent rest of the year. This erratic rainfall poses a challenge for the managers and the villagers during summer, and the Forest Department has to remain alert. The state government needs to upgrade the infrastructure for staff as the conditions of the guards' huts we saw were in a dilapidated stage. After the COVID-19 scare is over, the local economy will be back on track. The forest officers of Madhya Pradesh need to be reminded once again to plug the loopholes in the management of Bandhavgarh Tiger reserve and take lessons from the 2009 experience of Panna when it became famous for wrong reasons.

The writer is the Chairman of the Centre for Resource Management and Environment.

Views expressed are personal