Sariska has now got two tigers. It is a new beginning. But there are many issues still to be resolved to ensure the earlier fiasco of the reserve losing all its tigers will not be repeated.

Around 12 p.m. on June 28, 2008, amidst spattering rain in a rocky forest, a group of men were straining to lift a 500 kg crate. The task would have been easier had the Canter truck in which the crate was traveling not got stuck on a rain-washed jungle trail twice.
There was no way out. The grunting men would have to carry the heavy crate towards a helipad in the forest. The helicopter that would airlift the crate hovered in the pallid sky above Ranthambore Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan.
All of a sudden, the rain worsened and the copter pilot decided to turn back and flew out of sight. The men’s hopes were dashed. Then just as suddenly, the chopper returned. Finally, the crate, which carried an adult, wild, 220 kg tiger, was going to be airlifted to the cat’s new home in Sariska. The men, including scientists and forest staff, were relieved. If the chopper had not been able to land they would have had to release the wild tiger. They would also have had to take off his $1,500 satellite collar, which could detect his movements both through a ground tracking device and a satellite, as it was meant for the tiger to use it only during his life in Sariska.
On Friday, the big cat was joined at Sariska by a 170 kg tigress, similarly airlifted and similarly collared. The satellite collar was just one peg in a unique, much hyped, and expensive exercise, which brought together the Central and Rajasthan governments— which had previously sparred on the issue of the UNESCO World Heritage Site and Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary. It also brought together the scientific expertise of the Wildlife Institute of India, the guidance and funds of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the Indian Air Force, International NGO World Wildlife Fund and a Special Empowered Committee (SEC) set up in 2005 to look into the poaching crisis at Sariska Tiger Reserve.
With the reintroduction of tigers at the reserve, a new beginning has been made. But is the crisis over? Far from it. The Rajasthan Government has done, at most, a patch-up job by moving two cats from its only tiger population in Ranthambore. But the issues of regulation and habitat destruction, which led to the extinction of tigers between 1988 and 2004 at Sariska, remain and nothing seems to be moving this election year.

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