“Ty ger Ty ger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?.” Tiger-centric nature tourism has now become fashionable in the West and India’s well-to-do urbanites have taken to it with fervour. Sariska Tiger Reserve, an erstwhile shooting preserve of the maharaja of Alwar is one of the favourite tourist destinations for Westemers and Indians alike. I visited Sariska in 2005 as a member of the Tiger Task Force constituted by the Prime Minister. This Task Force was set up because no tigers were sighted at Sariska, nor was there any indirect evidence of tiger presence such as pug marks or scats for some years. The Rajasthan Forest Department explained that “the tigers had temporarily migrated outside the reserve and would be back after monsoon season”. Project Tiger Authority backed this assumption. When the Task Force helda meeting at Sariska the other members sat around in the lodge enjoying the liquid hospitality of the forest department, but Sunita Narain, the Task Force Chair, and ] took off to chat with the Forest Guards who knew much better what was happening on the ground. The Forest Guards took out their Field Diaries and showed us the entries over the years. They were well aware that tiger numbers were declining rapidly since 1999 and that none were left by 2002.
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