But their bosses had gone on fudging the numbers and claiming that there were still 27 tigers roaming around Sarska even in 2002. Simultaneously, the Central Bureau of Investigation, India’s intelligence agency, was asked to conduct a probe. After a two-month investigation, the agency declared that no tigers were left in the reserve. Poaching was blamed for the disappearance of tigers. But who were the poachers? The CBI met the Task Force off the record and told us that there could not be the slightest doubt that forest officials were involved in poaching. The skinned carcasses of the tigers were left lymg around stinking for days. It is impossible that the officials would not have noticed all these carcasses and were undoubtedly involved in the poaching racket. However, we were not allowed to record this observation in our Task Force report. On the ground all that happened was that the bureaucrats rounded up and beat up many people from surrounding villages accusing them of being involved in poaching, and, f course, no bureaucrat was ever held accountable.
Pseudoscience of the conservation cultists
As Salim Ali’s blunder at Bharatpur brought out, while he was a great naturalist and a master of the minutiae of bird life, he had little understanding of the science of ecology and of realities of Indian society, economy and polity. Ecology deals with complex systems that vary a great deal over space and time and are profoundly conditioned by their histories. Ecologists recognise that sweeping generalities like all cattle and buffalo grazing
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