Tiger Tourism Continues

Just read a newspaper report that the ban on Tiger Tourism in core areas of the tiger reserves has been lifted. Good news indeed. How else would the Save Tigers enthusiasts see for themselves if tigers are getting saved or not? NTCA has formulated fresh and strict guidelines. Salient points:

• Not more than 20% area (and not exceeding present usage) of the core reserve should be opened for tourism.
• If present usage exceeds 20% then Local Area Committee to put up a time-frame to bring it down to 20% or less.
• Tourism should be low-impact and regulated strictly adhering to site-specific carrying capacity.
• Focus to be shifted from wildlife tourism to ecotourism.

On our part, we at SaveTigers.com, request the GOs at tiger reserves to treat all NGOs as VIPs at par with GOs so we don’t face such banning situation in future  Save Tigers! Not ours or theirs but everyones

Some more good news

• While the Convention on BioDiversity (CBD) at Hyderabad, comes to a close, 5 cities – Hyderabad, Guntur, Thane, Varanasi and Shimla have signed MoUs with Local Action Biodiversity (LAB) India, to preserve biodiversity.

And some trivia

• India: GoM ayes Land Bill that allows land acquisition on agreement from 2/3 of the land-owners! Is the two-thirds by people count or by land holding The original bill had called for 80% consent and industry lobbyists had asked for dilution. दिख रहा है हमें हवा का रुख है किस तरफ और सुनामी का किस तरफ
• India: Totos, one of the oldest tribes facing extinction will be provided free foodgrains. Well, how about letting them cultivate their own foodgrains?
• Jaswant Singh, MP, on Editorial page in The Hindu dated October 17, 2012: “Reform is not a synonym for unbridled consumerism. There are values beyond money and markets too!” We agree, Sir.
• Tarsh Thekaekara, Biodiversity Conservation Researcher, on Op-Ed page in The Hindu dated October 17, 2012: “Efforts towards conserving the country’s biodiversity are hobbled by the frightening insistence that development cannot be held up!” Rightly said. We, at Save Tigers frequently wonder – what exactly is development?

Hey folks! Save Tigers has been shoogled!

Shoogled? Yeah, that’s a new context we have invented to mean “shooed away by google!” (Shoogle actually means “To shake or rock rapidly”). Do you google for all your information? Then you won’t find your favorite website on save tigers in the top 1000 (the zeros are right – it IS one thousand) results for the search term “save tigers“. Why? Because some smarta55 at google thinks that domain names with exact match keywords are worthless and should be shunted down the search results. Until few days back we were in the top 10 before the google smarta55es let off their gas!

Compare with other search engines: we are #5 in Bing and #3 in Yahoo for the term “save tigers”.

Do you know the deeper meaning of this google tactic? It’s all commercial sense you know! If people got accustomed to memorable domain names, they wouldn’t go to google to search so where will the monopoly get their bread and butter from?

Power corrupts absolutely and then गीदड़ की मौत उसे शहर की ओर ले जाती है!

Some people just don’t learn their lessons! Have they forgotten what happened to AOL and Microsoft? I hope they see this rant and open their eyes and brains!

Do you know? The Tiger is still the world’s favorite animal on the planet.

Playful Young Tiger in the Kanha Tiger Reserve.

We feel very strongly about, and invite our visitors to debate on tiger tourism in tiger reserve core areas. We have seen remarkable improvement in habitat and tiger numbers in the few tiger reserves where tiger tourism is allowed in the core areas. Moreover, where it is allowed, it is usually a small percentage of the core area and it is strategically and systematically regulated. So we are kind of surprised by the sudden activism to totally curtail tiger tourism in core areas. An op-ed page report “Ban on tourists no boon for tigers” by C Sarath, in The Hindu dated July 31, 2012, presents a nice perspective on the whole matter.

We invite you to leave your valuable comment on this site and debate on tiger tourism in tiger reserve core areas.

Dr K Ullas Karanth, renowned wildlife conservationist, has been conferred India’s 4th highest civilian award, the Padma Shri.

Congratulations Padma Shri Dr Ullas Karanth.