Ranthambore in Rajasthan embodies the complex set of pressures acting on a national park in India. Like most national parks and sanctuaries in India, Ranthambore’s natural resources are under heavy pressure from competing (and often conflicting) interests. Yet if India’s national parks and sanctuaries are to thrive in the future it will have to find ways to satisfy all the demands being made on its protected areas . The Ranthambore Story, while chronicling the development of the local land use conflict and the attempts to solve it, is also a window on the big picture of problems facing all of India’s protected areas.

History

    Ranthambore National Park takes its name from Ranthambore Fort which was built over a thousand years ago. The fort is one of India’s oldest remaining relics of its feudal past and today it is registered under the Indian Archeological Survey as a protected monument. Located within the current boundaries of the Park, the Ranthambore Fort stands atop a 700 Ft. steep walled hill. Throughout the second millennium the fort was held by a number of great emperors and generals who used the strategically located citadel to help control vast regions of central India. In more recent history the fort came under the control of the Maharaja of Jaipur, (the capital of Rajasthan), who used its surrounding area as his private hunting grounds.

    Soon after India achieved Independence in 1947 all the uncultivated lands of the princely rulers, including those owned by the then Maharaja of Jaipur, reverted to the state to be managed by the Indian Forest Service. In 1957 Ranthambore was declared a National Wildlife Sanctuary. Over the span of the next 25 years India bestowed on it increasing levels of environmental protection (Project Tiger Status in 1974 and National Park Status in 1981). Organizations including the BBC and National Geographic came to film Ranthambore’s wildlife. As a result the Park enjoyed a meteoric rise to international prominence and fame as one of the world’s premiere locations to see tigers in their natural habitat. Tens of thousands of tourists, both domestic and foreign, now come to Ranthambore National Park every year to enjoy its natural splendour and hopefully catch a glimpse of one of the most threatened and inspiring animals on the planet - the tiger.

    But there is more to the Ranthambore story. Few people realize the incredible pressures facing India’s national parks and sanctuaries. The Ranthambore story stands as a prime example of this situation. While the illegal poaching of tigers has been a well publicized activity both nationally and internationally, there exists a much more powerful pressure that is threatening to degrade most of India’s protected areas (national parks and sanctuaries). The rural masses’ need for basic resources to meet their daily sustenance requirements is the major threat to preserving the integrity of India’s natural landscapes and wildlife habitats.

    Unlike many Western nations, when India set itself to the task of establishing national parks and sanctuaries it did not have any lands that were devoid of people. Thus, to create parks India had to displace people. Since 1972 India has added 12.5 million hectares - or just under 4 per cent of its total land mass - to its system of national parks and sanctuaries to make a grand total of about 532 national parks and sanctuaries that span 15 million hectares (4.6 per cent of total land mass). As Indian law does not permit human habitation inside parks, millions of rural Indians have been rehabilitated in areas outside these legally designated protected areas. Yet the process is slow, , expensive and often controversial. It is estimated that there are still 2 -3 million people living inside India’s protected areas. Most of them are totally dependent on the natural resources of the park for their daily needs.

    Yet this is only part of the problem. There are several million more people living adjacent to the parks whose source of livelihood has legally been cut off by the creation of the national parks and sanctuaries. Many of these people have traditionally lived off the natural produce of the forest for generations. Over the past 25 years as the forests were turned into parks their traditional rights to use the land were taken away and their lifestyles were criminalized. Furthermore, the Indian Forest Service the agency responsible for managing all government lands including the protected areas has employed a top down approach as its management strategy. Villagers were not included in management decisions that affected them. This, of course, resulted in a build-up of resentment between villagers and the Forest Service.

    Ranthambore stands as a prime example of this situation. There were 16 villages within the park at the time of its inception. Since then 12 of them have been relocated in areas adjacent to the park boundary. There are also 90 other small towns and villages that border the park with an estimated current total population of 200,000 people. Many of these people continue to have little choice but to illegally enter the park to collect wood for cooking and grass to feed their cattle While these activities are absolutely essential from the villagers’ perspective, they are absolutely devastating from the environmentalist’s perspective. Villagers’ traditional land use is pitted against a modern cry for environmental preservation resulting in an escalating land use conflict. This exact conflict is repeated in parks and sanctuaries and for that matter on government forest lands all over India.

    The WWF-India Eco-development project aims to develop a model programme that can be used all over the country to help resolve this conflict.