And locals are all important. US-based biologist and conservationist George Schaller says, “The Indian tiger needs to be saved by saving its contiguous habitat. Local communities are stewards of their land. Landscape conservation can only exist with community participation.”

To protect the tiger, the villages of Jhirna, Dhara, Kothi Rau have been shifted from the buffer zone (a process on since the last decade), while a fourth village, Lal Dhang, is being relocated.

‘The luxury’ of 70 years’ protection

Bhartari points out that Corbett has had the ‘luxury’ of 70 years’ of protection. Established in 1936 first as Hailey Sanctuary, he says that park officials have a deep sense of their responsibility. In the buffer zone, 70 years of legacy speak. Everything is named after Corbett: Corbett International, Corbett Aroma, Corbett Den, even Corbett Hairdresser.

Yet, as the locals were slowly invo-lved in park activities, it became clear that villagers who had shared boundaries—and in some cases none —had no idea about tiger conservation or even the Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve.

Ecotourism was a new word too. “I didn’t know what a ‘tourist’ meant. I thought it was perhaps an animal in the jungle,” says Abdul Rahman, 24, a Gujjar who belongs to Dhela, a settlement in the Jhirna range in the buffer zone of the tiger reserve. His is one of the estimated 250 Gujjar families who live in the buffer zone. Rahman proudly says that he is the first one to leave his community’s traditional occupation—cattle rearing and milk procurement—and get a real job as a guide in the park. “No one was really interested in the tiger in our community. We looked at him as a menace who occasionally killed our cattle. We didn’t know that this was a protected tiger reserve. We only knew it was a jungle,” he says.

... contd.