[00:00:00] Speaker A: In the heart of India, a once thriving tiger reserve fell silent, its last roar fading in 2022.
Now a bold mission is underway to bring the tigers back to Satkosia, rewriting the future of an entire ecosystem.
Welcome to Rewadology, the nature podcast that explores the human side of conservation, travel and rewauting the planet. I am your host, Brooke Mitchell, conservation biologist and adventure traveler.
Today we are joined by Aditya Panda, an award winning wildlife conservationist, expedition leader, and the honorary wildlife warden of Angul district in his home state of Odisha, where the Satkosia tiger Reserve is located.
We explore the fascinating history of tiger reserves in India, including the challenges Satkosia faced during a failed reintroduction attempt in 2018. But thankfully, the story doesnt end there. Aditya walks us through the remarkable efforts underway to prepare Satkosia for tigers once again. From working with communities on voluntary relocations to cracking down on bushmeat and poaching and the exciting return of prey species, plus the other big cat in the area, leopards.
Sarkosia is a tale of resilience and strategic conservation and offers a story of hope for the future of India's tigers.
Before I forget, if you're loving what you're hearing, don't be shy. Please hit that subscribe button, leave us a review and share this episode with your nature loving pals. Every little bit helps spread the conservation love.
All right, enough chitchat for me. Let's jump into the fascinating world of tiger conservation with the one and only Aditya panda.
Well, hi, Aditya. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today and going through what I am predicting to be a very inspirational and hope giving episode. But first, let's just dive in. I want to learn all about you and your, I'm sure, incredible journey. So tell me, reflect back with me. Was there a particular moment in your life that you distinctly remember dedicating yourself to nature and conservation?
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Well, I had always been in love with wildlife and wild spaces, jungles, tigers, animals in general. All my life, all my childhood, as far back as I can believe, I was always fascinated by these things. A lot of it has to do with my grandfather. You know, all my bedtime stories would be by him, and all of them would be jungle stories and tiger stories. You know, I grew up in what would be considered a small town in India, but a pretty big city in most other parts of the world.
It's a state capital city of about a million people now. And so I had a pretty urban upbringing, and jungles and wildlife were always things that in my formative mind were far away and things that I always was sort of yearning to go and see and experience. You know, I did get my chances once in a while when we used to travel. It was, you know, I always, through my childhood, I knew that I wanted a life that kept me close to wildlife and kept me close to wild spaces. But it was, I think, in my teens, when, of course, you begin to read up more, become more aware, learn a little more, that I sort of really dedicated myself to the cause of conservation before that. It was always, of course, just childhood fascination with the subject part. As I grew up, as I read more, and as you know, that was a period in the nineties when the narrative on wildlife was beginning to change in India and conservation was becoming far more tropical, and everybody was beginning to talk about wildlife conservation. The old books and old documentaries and old movies, the old conversation about wildlife and tigers had always centered about hunting and man eaters and things like that. But through the period in which I happened to be a young boy, that, I think was the period when this narrative was beginning to change. And that, of course, had a profound impact on me and shaped the way in which I began to view wildlife and view wildlife conservation. So it was during those formative years, in my teens, late teens especially, an age at which you tend to have very strong opinions. And when I decided to dedicate my life to conservation.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: So then what path did you decide on to pursue that? Because I know now that you are a successful guide, you're an expedition leader, you're a lot of other titles that we will get into soon. So, yeah, how did you get to this place today? Did you go to school and study something in particular, or did you just start, you know, running through the jungles and learning wildlife, or how did you get your knowledgeable background on all of that?
[00:05:51] Speaker B: It was more of the latter. I really started running to the jungles and getting to know wildlife because, you see, no one at that period of time took wildlife as a successful career option. I did not have very many people to guide me in terms of, you know, taking up wildlife as a career in India, especially in the India of that period, the period when my generation was going to school and the generations before that, there was a massive societal pressure for children to do something, you know, to take up a serious career. You had your parents and peers and everybody, you know, and your teachers sort of always goading you towards a career either in medicine or engineering or the civil services or something serious like that. So when, you know, no creative path or no path of passion was ever really encouraged. So it was a constant sort of struggle for me to figure that out by myself, because the only thing that people were seeming to suggest to me when I was in school was that I should either become a vet or I should join the forest service, which were both good advice. But I had my reservations about, you know, how either of those parts would end up dictating my life later on. And I had a very clear vision at that point of time of exactly where and how I wanted to take my life path into. But of course, these days that's not the case anymore. The generation of now has several career options when it comes to wildlife, be it conservation biology, which is now a serious subject, or, you know, tourism or. There are so many options available now. And I'm glad that parents of this generation are taking a career in wildlife or an interest in wildlife in the children as a really serious thing.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: Yes. And you just mentioned tourism there, which I think is going to be the anchor point for the rest of the conversation. So India is known today. Now we're recording in 2024 for your incredible tiger reserves. And a lot of people travel from all over the world and also a lot of domestic tourism, from what I understand and my years in the field, to go. To go to these tigers reserves and see wildlife and, you know, they're just gems and jewels and treasures of India. So for those who maybe have not had the opportunity to go to India or really understand how these work, could you describe the tiger reserve system and maybe just protected lands as a whole in the India for so that we can really understand the next part of the conversation?
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I know it can be very confusing when people say National park and Wildlife Sanctuary and tiger reserve all in the same sentence. And yes, and, you know, there is a slight difference in understanding when we say wildlife sanctuary, especially between what it is perceived as in the US versus what it is perceived as here in India. In the US, a wildlife sanctuary is typically, you know, a captive facility where rescued wild animals are being looked after. But when we say wildlife sanctuary here in India, we mean something more like a state park. So we have national parks and state parks. National parks are funded by the federal government, which is known as the central government here in India, and the state parks are funded by the respective state governments. When we say tiger reserve, it means an area of tiger habitat, which is typically either wildlife sanctuary, which is a state park, or it could even be a national park that has been chosen for focused tiger conservation under a scheme run by the central government for the past 50 years, called project tiger.
Back in 1973 until the 1970s, there was a lot of legal hunting in India. In fact, there was even tiger hunting tourism till the 1960s. In 1968, our then prime minister misses Indira Gandhi, who, who herself was a pretty keen naturalist, was approached by a lot of naturalists and conservationists and even former hunters. And they were worried about the state of the tiger in the country by the 1960s because they were seeing that if India doesn't do anything about controlling hunting in the country, then by the 1980s, they saw tiger wooden probably go extinct. So in 1968, tiger hunting and the trade and export in tiger skins were banned.
In 1970, we conducted our first all India tiger census to figure out, just to take stock and know where we stand, how many tigers we have left. And that came up with a rather disturbing number of under 1800 tigers left in all of India. And then in 1972, we had an act passed by Parliament called the Wildlife Protection act, which outlawed all hunting and called for the establishment of a large number of wildlife sanctuaries and national parks. And in 1973, we started what was then called the world's most ambitious species conservation project, which is project tiger. It started with nine reserves. You know, nine areas were identified across India in different tiger landscapes, and these were to be managed and protected wholly and solely for, you know, with everything, all management decisions, all administration pointing towards the protection and revival of tigers. These reserves were started under a yemenite concept that we now understand as a source and sink concept, where the reserve itself would be sort of nurtured as a nucleus of tigers, where tigers would have first tried over the land and where tiger numbers would build and tigers would breed in them and then begin to spill out to the adjoining landscapes, which we refer to now as the sink landscape, and the reserve itself becomes the source population. So the source would spill out into the sink, and eventually it was expected that this would repopulate tiger landscapes from which tigers had vanished by then. And now, you know, 50 years later, 51 years. Now it's 2024. Last year, we celebrated 50 years of Project Tiger. So 51 years later, we have risen from nine reserves to 55 reserves and counting.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: And so how.
How have you all, or how has the government, whatever level you want to say, what does success mean?
And have you reached a successful. Where does Project Tiger stand 51 years later?
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Well, we can say we have reached success in the sense that when we started, when we had that first tiger census in 1970, although, you know that the census methodology that was used back then is quite outdated, and we are free to discuss the drawbacks of the methodology itself. But if we just take the result as vague figure of vague estimate of how many tigers were left in the country then, then compared to that, we have twice as many tigers now. So I would say it's when, when we say success, it's a pretty mixed in the sense that, yes, we can safely say that the tiger is not on the brink of extinction anymore. The tiger numbers have mostly increased within the reserves. But I think our biggest failing in the past 50 years has been that while tiger numbers have increased within the reserves, tiger numbers have reduced drastically in landscapes outside the reserves, landscapes that are not as well protected as the reserves. So we have arrived at a situation where tigers are mostly confined to reserves, even though we have far more reserves than we did back then. But your chances of coming across, you know, in the eighties, if you drove from one part of, you know, from one city to another in India and you drove through a beautiful forested area and it looked like good tiger landscape, chances were really high that it actually did also have tigers in it, even though it was absolutely unprotected, you know, just plain simple, what we call reserve forests here in India. But today, tigers outside tiger reserves have drastically declined, while tiger numbers are beginning to rise to in the reserves. Of course, in certain landscapes, such as central India, where a lot of the expeditions that are lead take us to in landscapes like that, we still have excellent landscape antiquity and a large number of tiger reserves. So you always have these floating, dispersing tigers that are always present in every block of forest. So I think barring central India and parts of the Taray arc landscape, which is the area bordering Nepal, in the foothills of the Himalaya and parts of southern India, in vast areas of India, northwestern India, eastern India, northeastern India, tigers have ended up becoming confined only to reserves. And, Brooke, the number of tigers has risen overall in India as a nation. But again, the success in tiger numbers increasing has been limited to some landscapes, while other landscapes, like eastern central India, where I am from, or most of northeastern India, have not seen that sort of success. We have seen tiger numbers continuing to go down in these landscapes until the recent past. And, in fact, we even have some reserves in these landscapes, which are tiger reserves on paper, but they do not have any tigers in them.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: And what would you say is the main cause of in both directions? Why are those particular areas seeing an increase in tigers and then where you're currently located in other parts of India, why are tigers not bouncing back?
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Well, there are many reasons for starters, in east and central India, we have had a lot of insurgency that was going on through the eighties, nineties and early two thousands.
So that made it difficult for the forest department to be able to effectively manage and protect some of the reserves, while in other reserves, it was just pure apathy. You see, when a reserve is not all that well known, when a reserve is not a major tourist destination, when a reserve is not a major safari tourism destination, it tends to, you know, we, as we say, out of sight, out of mind. It tends to remain outside the spotlight, and we become reliant entirely upon the managers who tell us what's going on. Also, in eastern central India, not only do we have, you know, it's. It's in a way, ironic because eastern central India actually has some of the highest quality and largest stretches of tiger habitat in the country. But at the same time, this part of the country also has a lot of indigenous communities that, that have traditionally been living in these landscapes. And a lot of these communities, you know, for them, bushmeat hunting is a way of life. They don't necessarily do it for subsistence, but there are a lot of festivals and traditional. It's just a lifestyle thing. You know, there are places where certain communities will indulge in what is known as mass hunting.
You know, for certain days of the year, everybody, every male member in the entire landscape will go out with whatever weapon they have, and they will shoot and kill everything except tigers and elephants. And besides the traditional, you know, the festive hunting, there is also the everyday bushmeat hunting. Using snares, using, you know, bows and arrows, using guns, of course, illegal guns, using bake bombs, and nowadays even using live wire tripwires, you know, laying trip wires along game trails and hooking them up to overhead high tension electric cables. And so basically, this area, this part of the country has seen tremendous amounts of bushmeat hunting. And it's happened to the extent that we have several areas where we have experienced what is known as the empty forest syndrome or the green Desert syndrome, where you have beautiful habitat but very little wildlife. And as you know, with big cats, as soon as prey base begins to plummet, the populations begin to collapse. Tigresses are not able to raise cubs anymore. They're not able to provide for cubs anymore. Breeding begins to fail. The tigers begin to kill livestock and cattle. And as a result, they got poisoned in large numbers through the eighties and nineties. And of course, in the nineties and early two thousands, there was also a lot of tiger poaching. For the illegal trade through parts of Southeast and East Asia, where these landscapes were among the first landscapes to be, you know, completely emptied of tigers. And at the same time, there was always the constant pressure of livestock grazing, timber felling.
Valleys, which are so important for ungulates, were taken over by cultivation and human habitation. So there was a lot of encroachment. And then, of course, we lost some of our best tiger landscapes in this part of the country to iron ore, coal and bauxite mining as well. So it was, you know, literally carpet bombed with issues through the eighties and nineties and early two thousands.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. That's like every single type of devastation you can't imagine.
But I think this. I think now's the perfect time then to talk about how you're helping to flip this narrative and this exciting tiger reserve of satcosia that we were just discussing before we started recording today. And I want to hear all about this. So first, what is this tiger reserve? Where is it, and why are you becoming involved with this exciting project?
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Well, Satkosia, when I was growing up, when I was beginning to go out into the field, you see, while I was still in school, I became a member of a non profit. It was sort of like a local wildlife club, but with a lot of very experienced people who did a lot of serious conservation work as well. And I became a member of that organization, and they sort of took me into their fold and mentored me in natural history and conservation. And around that time, you know, Satkosia was not a tiger reserve, but this organization was working really hard to have that area notified as a tiger reserve because it had a few remaining tigers. And on our field visits there, we had found evidence of tigers actually breeding there. And we thought that if this area could be our state at that point of time had only one tiger reserve. It was the simlipal Tiger Reserve, which was among the first nine tiger reserves with which project tiger started. But after that, our state and successive government sort of lost momentum and never decided to protect any other parts of the state as tiger reserves. So in the early two thousands, this organization was very keen on getting Satcosia, which at that point of time was just a wildlife sanctuary or a state park. They were very keen on getting it notified as a tiger reserve. And I used to accompany them on their field visits and collecting data and collecting, you know, just building a case for getting that place notified. And, you know, we managed to lobby and push with our state government to propose it as a tiger reserve to the federal government. And the federal government did eventually, after a few years of bureaucratic paper pushing, approve it as a tiger reserve. And then our state took still longer to give issue what was known as a final notification, which is an official notification. So by the time that happened, it was 2007. And I remember, I remember that it was the 30 December 2007, and I happened to be in the park the day before that, and the which was the 29th. And on that day, I had come across tracks, a tigress with a lone cub. And you see, no one really expected to see tigers there. We would, you know, the tiger numbers were so few and there were so many villages inside the park. Every single valley had been taken up by human habitation over the years, and they were full of fields and farmland and livestock. There were no natural grasslands left anymore. So there were very, very few tigers left. And they were also quietly getting poisoned by the people living in the park. So when we found tiger tracks in that park, we used to celebrate. We used to drink to that. So when I came across those tracks of that lone Tigris with, you know, the Tigris accompanied by a lone cub, I was really, really excited. And the morning after that, I, in fact, even heard her calling to the cup as I walked along the trail. And then the very next day, when the news came that the park has been notified officially as a tiger reserve, there couldn't have been a happier soul in all of India than I. So, of course, everything was looking great. Everything looked very promising. But the state at that point of time continued to remain. You know, they sort of just did token service to the reserve and it was notified on paper, but things took much, much longer to change on the ground. And there was a time in 2012, I believe, when we began to get really, really alarmed at the state of affairs there. At that point of time, there were no signs of breeding tigers anymore. And there was a time when we stopped finding tracks of male tigers. There was only one set of tracks that we would find, and it was a tigress. And that was around the time when trail cameras were beginning to come into use in a major way. And when the first camera traps were set out across southeast, we managed to get tiger pictures, but only of one tigris. There was no evidence of any other tiger surviving there. So in 2012 ish, I decided that I need to sound the press out about this. And, you know, the media broke this news that here we have a tiger reserve where we are facing local extinction, tiger reserve without tigers. And that sort of got the alarm bells ringing the federal government became concerned because through Project Tiger, they were pumping this reserve. So the National Tiger Conservation Authority, which is the body that is in charge of looking after Project Tiger, sent a party, they sent a committee to come take stock of the situation in the park. The committee was quite aghast at the state of affairs, and they recommended a number of corrective measures that needed to be taken. And in 2018, it was decided that, you know, after the first village from the core area of the reserve was relocated, it was decided that tigers would be reintroduced. But at that point of time, a lot of us were concerned that this was being done too soon and without proper preparation. And sure enough, within months of the first two tigers being brought in, problems started appearing. The Tigris that was brought in from Bandhagbar Tiger reserve. In fact, both these tigers were known to me personally as individuals because on the expeditions that I lead, I had seen them as wild tigers in their source habitats. So the male came from a place called Kanha National park, and the tigress was brought from a place called Bandhavgarh Tiger reserve. And both of these are destinations that I lead Nat have expeditions to. So I had known both these tigers. The male was young male, about two, two and a half years old, called MB two. And the Tigris was again a young tigris called Sundari. And it was sort of surreal that tigers that I had seen in another landscape were being brought to my reserve. But things ended up pretty unfortunately when the Tigris actually started killing cattle in broad daylight in the middle of villages. She came from Vandavgarh in and around which, you know, it is pretty normal for tigers to go out of the park, go into villages, kill cattle and drag them back into the park. And the community there at Bandhavgarh is used to it as a way of life because they have always had tigers doing that and they always got immediately compensated and by the forest department and also a lot of people from the community there were directly employed in tiger tourism, wildlife tourism. So community equations. There were completely different from community equations here. Here, people did not want tigers.
And when tigers, when this tiger started killing cattle in the middle of human habitation, in broad daylight, people got quite angry. And then eventually things sort of hit rock bottom when she actually killed two people.
So she was also beginning to lose her fear of humans and she was beginning to look at people as prey, which is, you know, really dangerous. So she had to be captured, and she is now in a zoo. The male tiger who never entered human habitation who never killed cattle, who kept to the core area of the park, was seen in the company of our last remaining Tigris quite a few times and was killing only natural, you know, wild game, wild angulates. He was found snared and dead because the team that was tracking both the tigers was so preoccupied with keeping the tigress out of trouble, because every single day she'd get into human habitation and every single day people would create a rathas about it. So they had to face they were in the line of fire keeping her safe. And what that meant was that the male was getting neglected. And because the male was, you know, keeping to himself, staying in the core area, not going into human habitation, they also sort of began to take him for granted. But one night he probably ventured to the fringes of the park and someone had set up snares for killing wild boar or deer. And the tiger managed to have his head caught, his neck caught in the snare. He was a powerful big male, so he managed to tear the snare off, but the snare ring stayed around his neck. And of course, the act of tearing it off did cause some skin wounds. And because he was not being monitored as closely as the Tigris Washington, no one noticed the wound and no one noticed when it began to, you know, go septic and just died. So that was when the whole project was shelved indefinitely and the state was told that, please get your act right, please get things ready on the ground, and only then will we even think of bringing back tigers. Otherwise, there's no question of bringing back tigers when, you know, everything on the ground is in such a mess. So after that period, 2019 onwards, say, roughly over the last five years, there have been tremendous efforts to take corrective action to fix things at Satkosia. I have, you know, have been involved with that landscape practically all my adult life. And the state wildlife leadership administratively began to change in the period after that as well. And the new officers that came into office after that period began to listen to people like me. They began to take our advice, they began to take our opinions. And because I have been someone who has always worked for that landscape and managed to build a fair amount of credibility for myself, I was appointed as the honorary wildlife warden of that region in 2020, the year Covid started. And that's when I began to get more closely involved with the park management. Now, when I say honorary wildlife warden, this is a system that we have had in this country for a very long time. And I think it's something that is present in many former british colonies. I believe Kenya also has something like that. South Africa probably does. An honorary wildlife warden is a gazetted officer appointed by the state and legally empowered to take protective action to arrest, search and seize, to advise the state, to advise the park management, to propose new areas to be notified as protected areas, and a number of other powers. The interesting thing is that an honorary wildlife warden is, in essence, a regular citizen, you know, a non official person who has been invested with official powers in order to serve as a link between the bureaucracy and the public. So it's a really interesting and a really important role that can be used to do a lot of good for conservation. And what we have started doing over the past five years in Satoshi is that we have not only started really, really fixing protection, cracking down big time on bushmeat hunting, ensuring that the boundaries of the park, the core area of the park, are really secure, ensuring that snaring and electrocution and, you know, bait bombs and poisoning and other means of poaching animals for bush meat are really cracked down upon. And the most important thing, I think, that we have managed to do, which has given us the greatest success, is that, you know, the government of India has a scheme that incentivizes anybody voluntarily wishing to relocate from within a protected area or from any remote deep forest area. Anybody who wishes to relocate from an area like that and come closer to mainstream society, come closer to schools and hospitals and markets and roads and, you know, regular public services. The government of India incentivizes them with a life changing amount of money, money and also land and housing and a lot of hand holding to help them settle into a new life. And the individual state governments are adding to that scheme with money and, you know, offers of their own. So in the past five years, our state has really begun to take tiger conservation seriously because, you know, it was quite embarrassing when every time the all India tiger estimation results came out, our state was shown as a laggard. You know, there were success stories everywhere, but for a few states, including ours. And that began to become something that the citizens of the state started to get embarrassed about, humiliated about. And there was a lot of pressure on the state government to get its act right as far as tiger conservation is concerned. So that led to our state government taking some rather important policy decisions, among which were that the compensation paid for damage to livestock, crop or property by wild animals is amongst the highest in the country today. And also the compensation given under the voluntary relocation scheme in our state is also among the highest in the country today. And what this ended up doing was that it incentivized a lot of people, especially the younger generations in Sapkosia Tiger Reserve, to take this scheme and move out. You see, for people sitting in comfortable urban homes, you know, with good lives, it is quite nice and quite easy to romanticize an ancient way of life. You know, it's easy for people to say that, oh, indigenous communities, they are the best protectors for wildlife. They have always coexisted, which is a really badly abused term with wildlife since generations, and therefore, that they should not be displaced. You know, displacement is one thing when it is done forcibly. Displacement is another thing when someone voluntarily wants to have that option, to move to a different level in life.
What we have found in Satkosia is that the older generations, the ones that were very comfortable in their lives, or let's not say comfortable, but the people that had gotten used to that way of life had their reservations about moving out. But the younger lot, you know, people who are in their twenties and thirties today, they do not want to be foraging in the forest for food and, you know, hunting and gathering. And, you know, no matter how you. How much one romanticizes that way of life, they don't want to be doing that. They don't want to be cultivating one small holding of land with just a single crop of rain fed rice and fighting to protect that from elephants and from deer and then just making do with whatever remains. And they don't want to be stuck inside a protected area, because inside a protected area, you cannot have large infrastructure, you cannot have four lane highways, you cannot have, you know, power lines coming in. You cannot have malls and markets and schools. Well, barring for very small primary schools, you know, it's an isolated life.
It's a very difficult life for a lady who might be on the verge of, you know, going into labor in the middle of the night. It's, you know, you have to use three different modes of transport to get her out to the nearest highway and then get her to a hospital.
For you to be able to sell your crop or whatever it is that you produce in the nearest market, you have to go pretty far away to the nearest town. It's not an easy life. It's easy to romanticize, but it's not an easy life.
It's not an easy life when elephants come and break your mud house. It's not an easy life when leopards and tigers kill your livestock.
You see, you cannot coexist with a predator. You can co occur, you can happen to be in the same landscape as it. You can't put your arm around the tiger's shoulder and say, we are living happily together. That doesn't happen. Coexistence.
The term coexistence, as I said, is really abused in that sense. And that is what we are seeing with the younger generations. They don't want all of that. They want smartphones, they want access to 5G Internet. They want to be able to travel the world. They want to be riding a nice motorcycle or a good car. They want to be living in a good house with air conditioning and satellite television, and they want to be going to malls and they just want to go a step above in life. And, you know, I don't think any one of us has the right to deny them that choice in life. The beauty about the scheme that we have in India for voluntary relocation from wildlife habitats is that it is not imposing. It is, as the scheme's name itself suggests, entirely voluntary. No one can force anyone to stay. No one can force anyone to leave. It is a person's choice of whether or not they want to continue the old way of life with all the troubles that it comes with Orlando, whether they want to take on this new way of life with a life changing amount of money. It's a lot of money that is given per family. And when it says, you know, when the scheme says per family, it also includes any unmarried adults in the family. So, say, if it's a couple with two grown up children who are over the age of 18, then that is considered three family units. And so that's three times the money. And as I said, the amount of money that is given is a life changing amount of money.
So what we saw over the past five years in south Kosia is that a large number of people took advantage of this. A large number of villages relocated completely out of the park. And villages tend to occupy valleys. The sapkosia landscape is quite hilly and we have steep hills and then deep valleys, sort of gorge like valleys in between. And it was these valleys that were always occupied. You see, the hills are thickly forested, but the valleys were where naturally, earlier we had grasslands, savannah. And, you know, the valleys also tend to have water because streams and other water courses go through them. So people had occupied these areas because these are easier to cultivate. Now, with the villages beginning to vacate, these valleys are. They have turned into enormous savannah grasslands. And we have seen phenomenal, unexpected increase in the number of ungulate prey species, such as spotted deer. You know, when I started going to Satkosia in the early days, we would spend a week in the park, walking, driving, moving around everywhere. And in the week that we stayed, if we saw three or four spotted deer, which is one of the most common prey species across India, if we saw three or four spotted deer, we would be thrilled. Today, if you drive today, if you drive through Satkosia for 2 hours, you could count, I don't know, 1215 hundred spotted deer in just two hour drive. And this is a change that has happened in just five years. Just five years. It's amazing how quickly nature bounces back when you just give it the chance to.
South Kosia now has a prey density of about 50 to 60 animals per square kilometer, which is, you know, as good as the best tiger reserves.
[00:47:25] Speaker A: That's incredible. So it sounds to me like ever since the failed experiment in 2018, that the state government and, you know, with your advice and all these highly educated people are taking more of like, a rewilding stance where you are incorporating every single aspect of this. You know, the main goal is to bring back the tiger. But how do we do that properly? How do we make sure the communities that are going to be around these tigers are going to be safe, they're going to be properly compensated, all of these things. And then that was my next big question that you just answered, was, we can have tigers, but if they have nothing to eat, we've already seen what's happened. Bad things happen, happen. So the prey base is starting to come back, too. So I guess now what's the plan for the tiger aspect of this? Are leopards there as well? I know that sometimes poor leopards are left out of the conversation, but they're also an important predator on the landscape as well. So how is all of the pieces fitting back together? Are there tigers there now or. Or are you going to have to bring back tigers? And if so, where are they coming from?
Just. Yeah. What's the situation today moving forward?
[00:48:41] Speaker B: We lost our last tigress in November of 2022.
We never found her, but we just stopped finding her tracks. We just stopped seeing her on the trail cameras in November of 2022. She was about 16 years old by then, so we just assumed that she has gone to her happy hunting grounds. And in these past five years, with the increase in prey base, we have seen also an equally phenomenal increase in the number of leopards.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: Wow. Okay.
[00:49:15] Speaker B: Tigers, leopards and wild dogs were the three top co predators in this landscape.
We haven't had much wild dog evidence in the past ten years. But the tiger, of course, is gone for the moment. But leopards have come back like never before. We are seeing more leopards than ever before. Now we estimate that the entire Satkosia landscape, which is Satkosia, along with adjoining habitats around it, is home to well over 100 rabbits.
[00:49:49] Speaker A: Wow. Okay. Did not expect that number.
[00:49:52] Speaker B: And even on my visits, when we go out patrolling, when we go out inspecting things, you know, we have started to see leopards quite frequently.
[00:50:04] Speaker A: Oh, you're seeing them?
[00:50:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:50:07] Speaker A: Wow. Oh, my gosh, I'm so jealous.
[00:50:10] Speaker B: Not only are we seeing them, the leopards are also beginning to become more and more bold and confident. So that is another sign. When wild animals begin to become confident around vehicles driving through the park, when they begin to get more and more diurnal, that's a sign that the habitat is not being disturbed by hunting or by large groups of people roaming around on foot. So all of these are pointing towards, you know, a confident situation for bringing black tigers. And just a couple of months ago, we had a committee come down from the National Tiger Conservation Authority to once again take stock of situation in the park. And they were really, really satisfied with the status of the park.
We managed to show them, I think, three different leopards in two days.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:51:14] Speaker B: Amazing.
One of which had two young cubs accompanying her. And they saw so much wildlife in those two days that they said that, you know, your core area is as good as the core area of any tiger reserve in this country. And they were really satisfied with the management improvements, they were really satisfied with the protection mechanisms. And they said that, you know, there are a few more villages that we are still working with to enable them to relocate. And they said that, you know, if you, if you succeed with that, we can approve your tiger reintroduction to resume. And the idea now is to get about ten tigers in a phased manner over the next five years or so. But we are yet to receive the final approval from the National Tiger Conservation Authority. But as soon as that happens, what we will do is that we will begin to source tigers from reserves in central India, because Satkosia is sort of at the eastern end of the central India landscape. So not very long ago, when we had more tigers in this landscape, maybe 30, 40, 50 years ago, the tiger population of Satkosia would have been genetically linked to the tiger populations of central India. So it is best to get tigers from a landscape that is similar from a landscape with tigers that were genetically closest to the tigers we had here. So we shall be getting these tigers from there. And it's quite an interesting experience of how tigers are translocated and rewilded.
First, you know, you obviously have to identify the right individuals. They have to be of the right age group. They should be at the age at which tigers, young tigers, naturally begin to disperse from their mothers and from their natal habitats.
You target tigers like that, tranquilize them. And I. You get them here, of course, you have to be very careful about, especially after a past experience, one has to be very careful about the individuals that are selected. One should not get tigers that are in the habit of raiding villages for cattle, for example, for rewilding like this. It is best to get tigers that are really, really shy individuals. You know, the tigers that go out of their way to avoid vehicles and people and tigers that hunt natural prey almost entirely. So we will be choosing tigers like that. They will be translocated here in a special vehicle. And at Satkosia, we have set up what we call a soft release enclosure.
So this is going to be a large enclosure into which wild prey can occasionally be driven into. And the enclosure will sort of be like a. It will offer a miniature version of Satkosia to the incoming tigers of the habitat type. It will have various habitat features in it. It will have water in it, and the new tigers will be allowed to settle in there for few weeks, which will also serve as a quarantine period. And, you know, once they have got their bearings in the landscape, we will release them out of the enclosure so that they can then begin to explore the landscape on their own and begin to settle it. And, of course, we will have dedicated teams tracking each individual tigers. These teams will be equipped not only with all the satellite and gps and radio tracking devices that will track the Tiger scholars, but they will also have elephants trained, domestic elephants that are crucial for tiger track and vehicles so that, you know, on a daily basis, we can monitor these tigers really, really closely till they settle in. So, yeah, fingers crossed that over the next five years, not only will be getting all these tigers, but that also, through the course of that period, those tigers will begin to breed and stabilize.
[00:56:04] Speaker A: How exciting. Like to be right on the cusp of just something so spectacular and seeing it evolve for decades now in your lifetime, that has to be so rewarding. And I just want to make one quick comment about the using elephants for tiger surveys. But actually, when I was in Nepal in 2021, the NT and C team, they were doing, so this was 2021. And, you know, the big, massive global scale, well, global scale census of tigers was getting ready to happen and they were all out on their elephants to do the big tiger census. And we were there then. I was there then interviewing everybody, which was really, really cool. Obviously, I did not go out with them. This was in Chitwan specifically that we were there. I met that team. Well, I met the NT and C team and both Bardia and Chitwan. And it was the big year of the big census. And so it was just very interesting to hear how scientists and just those landscapes use, you know. Yeah, like domesticated, I guess you can say, working elephants to do those, it would be literally impossible without them. So that was definitely interesting. And I had a question. Is there any way, I don't know the connectivity of this landscape? Is there any way a tiger could naturally disperse Satkosia or is it just too blocked by human development? Or is there any way they could repopulate it themselves?
[00:57:35] Speaker B: You see, Satkosia is located almost banked in the middle of a state called Odisha in India.
And the reserve is on either side of a river called the Mahanadi, which forms a 22 kilometer long gorge through the river, through the. Through the reserve. And the gorge is also the southernmost range of the gariaal crocodile, which is another story.
[00:58:04] Speaker A: Oh, cool.
[00:58:06] Speaker B: You see, we do have good connectivity. Theoretically a tiger could walk from Satoshi if you give him a map, through forests all the way to central India. But the thing is that the nearest source population of tigers from Satkosia are, well, there is one in northern Odisha, which is called simlipal, which is probably, as the crow flies, maybe 100 and 5200 kilometers from Sapkosia, which is not a long distance. But simlipal itself is just beginning to sort of resume being a source population. That population had also gone down to a bottleneck, single digit number. And that population itself is just beginning to stabilize. And the nearest other true source population would be a place like Kana tiger in central India. And that is about, what, 500 km as the crow flies. And if you put in landscape features and, you know, other things like that, it's going to be a long walk for a tiger. Not that they don't do it. We do have tigers from the central India landscape always coming into Orissa even as we speak. At the moment, there are two tigers from central India that are in Orissa trying to find a suitable piece of real estate here. But tigers, you know, we have had evidence of tigers dispersing close to 2000 miles. They walk through human habitation, they walk through fields, they walk through, you know, across railway tracks, and highways at night and by daylight, they find whatever cover they can find and just try and hide and, you know, wait it out till the night again when human activity dies down and they can walk again. So tigers are fully capable of doing that. But the issue is that when it comes to repopulating population, you need tigresses, not tigers. The long distance dispersers are invariably male tigers. You see, the social dynamics of tigers is such that it is only the young males that are pressured to disperse over long distances looking for a place for themselves. The tigresses, the young females, will invariably end up having a territory next to their mothers or in the nearby area. And the established male tigers of the source population will never pressure tigress to move out of that area because they want tigresses, but they do not want. The established males will see any younger male as a challenge to their future. So they will kick them out. And it is the young males that invariably wander into states like ours from faraway source populations. And that is why, without artificial translocation, we cannot have any hope of a natural repopulation by tigers in this landscape at all. You need to have a source population no farther than maybe 50 or 60. Expect an area to be naturally repopulated.
[01:01:48] Speaker A: That makes total sense. Okay. Yeah. Thanks for explaining that further because, you know, that's a similar dynamic that we're running to in here in the United States is like with the mountain lion trying to disperse back east, but it's almost impossible for them to get past the Midwest and I anywhere further east, so. And it's a very. It's a very similar situation. A lot of. It's a lot of young males looking for females and they never find them and they never make it to where they want to go because they're usually shot before they get there. So.
Yeah, so this is also exciting, Aditya. And I am like, I'm feeling so inspired and just so full of hope because big cats are my absolute love. I know that, you know, you're behind me right now, and anybody watching the video version, you see that I have two big cat photos behind me. I'm very passionate about them, but I also understand the reality. So, thank you so much for going through the community aspect of this, because I know that previously, there's a lot of controversy around that. And as we're looking long term, let's say that, you know, the big dream has arrived. You have tigresses, you have an established breeding population.
Everything is looking rosy and rainbows and unicorns. And it's fantastic. How do you, the state, keep this going? What key factors do you feel are imperative to make sure that Sakosia continues on and becomes a well established tiger reserve?
[01:03:25] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question.
You see, for the time being, the amount of attention that this translocation is going to get in the press and the media and the public in general is going to give it the momentum for political support. Even if you don't have political support, it will at least ensure that there is no political opposition to it. But in the long run, I think it's very important to take the communities living around the reserve into the equation, and it is something we have already started working on. We would like to give the communities living on the fringes of Satkosia and all around it in the Sarkosia landscape a direct step in the presence of tigers. And the best way to do that would be through tourism. If we can have a well established tourism model, like we have elsewhere in India, set up in Satkosia, and if we can ensure employment generation at scale, you know, it's really important that employment be generated at scale in the fringes of the reserve and in the larger landscape, then that is going to be. Be a self sustaining sort of.
Well, you can call it an economic ecosystem, for the lack of a better term.
[01:04:53] Speaker A: Yes, monetizing and.
[01:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And that then will ensure that South Kosya never has to go through what it went through in the past, and that the tiger population there stabilizes and turns into a social population of its own. I would estimate easily about 70 to 80 tigers, if not more, as the carrying capacity of the Sarkosia Tiger reserve. And once you have a population that large, breeding, you know, the very location of Satkosia, right in the center of Orissa, would mean that every single other tiger landscape in the state is going to benefit directly from that source population, with tigers spilling out and repopulating nearby areas. And I think, you know, the Odissa of my grandfather's bedtime stories where, you know, it was the most, you know, obvious thing to come across. Tiger eyes shining in car headlights as you drove through the backroads of the state, you know, that, I think, can come back again.
[01:06:09] Speaker A: Wow, that's such a beautiful image. And talking about your story coming full circle and to bring it back to you for a second, I can only imagine the emotional turmoil and excitement and just everything you have felt and experienced through this.
And I kind of want to ask you a personal question. What has this been like for you? It sounds like you are so personally invested in this and to see it take so long, but also to be right on the cusp of quote unquote, success.
What has this been like for you, this journey?
[01:06:53] Speaker B: Well, I guess it's been a lot of evolution as a person. As you know.
You see, conservation Brook is a very thankless field to be in. The greatest reward is in the work itself. It's not something that people get paid for doing. It is not something that people get rewarded for doing. It's something you get into because you have that fire in your belly and because you make it the purpose of your life. So when you dedicate yourself to something like that, you obviously do not expect anything in return.
You know, the end itself is the reward, and you.
I think it just shapes one as a person into just giving and giving and giving, one's time, one's energy, one's resources, one's nervous energy, and not expecting anything in return. So it's.
When I was in my twenties, I used to get very agitated quite easily with my opinions and what I would see happening around my state and the systemic failures that were rife back then. But now I think the whole journey has caused me to mature into a far more evolved person. And I think that has led me to be able to get where I am right now. Now where I, despite being a private citizen, have managed to find myself in a position that is being recognized and rewarded by others by putting me in a place where I am part of the policymaking process while still being a private citizen. And I think that is an immense privilege. And, you know, the very fact that, you know, I can just go to Satkosia wherever I want to, you know, be part of the management of a tiger reserve is something that a lot of wildlife lovers just dream of doing and never get a chance to, because you can only go in as a tourist with a lot of restrictions and a lot of. I mean, yes, especially in India. Yeah, especially in India. But, yeah, it's been humbling in more ways than one.
[01:09:42] Speaker A: What a beautiful growth story.
Yes. And you'll definitely have to keep us posted. I want to be one of the first to know when it's like, okay, the reintroduction is happening, you'll have to come back on the show and let us know all of the updates. Of course. And Aditya, I just wanted to sit down and say thank you personally for bringing such a beautiful and hopeful story to us. And right on the cusp of something great. And if somebody wants to maybe get in touch with you. They have questions, they want to ask about it or they want to follow along as you post updates. What is the best way for somebody to maybe get in touch with you or just see what you're up to?
[01:10:18] Speaker B: Well, they can always follow me on social media. Instagram is the one I'm most active on.
Twitter is the one I used to be active on. So on Instagram you can find me at aditya Panda. That's a dasha panda. And of course you can also visit my website which is www. Dot adityapanda dot in perfect.
[01:10:48] Speaker A: And as always everybody, I have everything in the show
[email protected] so feel free to head over there or follow the show on any of the platforms. I'll be blasting this everywhere because this is such a great and beautiful story. So Aditya, thank you again for sitting down with me. I know it's late for you, very late for you, and so I appreciate you sharing your great story with all of us.
[01:11:12] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Brooklyn, it's a pleasure being here.
[01:11:17] Speaker A: Thank you for joining me on this wild adventure today. I hope you've been inspired by the incredible stories, insights and knowledge shared in this episode. To learn more about what you heard, be sure to check out the show
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