Thread by @RazaKazmi17

Some history Trivia on Project Tiger. A🧵

Though the Project was launched today, 50 yrs ago, the actual beginning was a year earlier. In 1972, an 11-member 'task force' constituted by Indira Gandhi submitted its report. They thought of a title for their report. They called it 👇

So that's the genesis of the name "Project Tiger", it was the title of the task force's final report.

We know that Project Tiger started with 9 tiger reserves. However, few know that the task force report recommended only 8 reserves representing the tiger's varied habitats. +

The 9th of the "Original Nine" i.e. Sundarban tiger reserve was actually added by none other than Indira Gandhi herself, a keen naturalist & conservationist. She'd visited, on 24th Jan 1973, what arguably is the most unique tiger habitat in the world - the mangroves Sundarbans +

and got it added as the 9th. @Jairam_Ramesh in his excellent book "Indira Gandhi: A life in nature" provides details in the bit excerpted below.

The 11-member task force that started it all, was composed of a mix of bureaucrats, conservationists & a politician. The bureaucrats +

included four IFS officers (TN Srivastava, NS Adkoli, SR Choudhury, and Kailash Sankhala), an IAS officer MK Ranjitsinh (another ex-officio member was the Financial Adviser who might've been an IAS too). The conservationists were Mrs. Anne Wright who was the first to raise alarm+

on the immense scale of the tiger-skin trade at the time, ornithologist Zafar Futehally, Duleep Mathai, and naturalist R.S. Dharmakumarsinhji. Chairing the task force was a politician, Dr. Karan Singh.

Here's a rare image of the official launch of Project Tiger at Corbett. +

Of those 11, three are still among us: Karan Singh, Anne Wright & MK Ranjitsinh, and I've been lucky to have closely known the last two.

However, a Project is always as good as those implementing it on the ground. Here, there was a team of remarkable IFS officers in each state +

who turned the prescriptions and ideals of a 123-page report into a reality. These were the inaugural 9 Field Directors of the inaugural 9 reserves. It is worth recalling the names of each of those phenomenal officers who turned the tide in the favor of the tiger when all hope +

seemed lost.

They were J.P. Sinha (Palamau), S.R. Choudhury (also member of task force, Similipal), HS Panwar (Kanha), Kalyan Chakrabarti (Sundarban), C.B. Singh (Corbett), S. Deb Roy (Manas), B.R. Koppikar (Melghat), Fateh Singh Rathore (Ranthambore) & DG Wesley (Bandipur). +

KS Sankhala, the inaugural Director of Project Tiger, wrote of these men:

"In Kanha, Panwar is mad about his Minolta camera, capturing the ecological changes in the meadows & studying the causes of depletion of the vanishing swamp deer. C. B. Singh protests even about angling +

with line and rod in the Ramganga River in Corbett Park; he is a purist. Debroy exchanges fire with poachers even at night in Manas and they know full well that he is a crack shot. Wesley's wife but for her age and the responsibility of grown-up children would have gone to the +

law court over his absences. Koppikar has lived most of his life as a married bachelor so his new life-style in the Project does not bother him; he prefers a bullock cart to a jeep. Fateh Singh' s wife is a Rajput girl..she is unlikely to protest. Saroj is virtually living with +

Khairi, a tigress in the Similipal hills. The commitment is total & the team is perfect....success of Project Tiger in just 2 years has dazzled even the field directors. No axe falls on any tree, no saw moves on dead or fallen wood."

('Tiger Pioneers', pic by Prosenjit Dasgupta)

Of these 9 remarkable men, only HS Panwar (Koppikar & Panwar would also succeed Sankhala as Director, Project Tiger) is among us today.

Of course, there were incredible superior officers (such as Kailash Sankhala, JJ Dutta in MP, SP Shahi in Bihar, and+

so on) supporting these field officers, & juniors right from men like Kafeel Sheikh in Melghat to incredible trackers and guards such as Manglu Baiga in Kanha, Umar Miyan in Palamau to Mahouts like Mohammad Ishtiaq in Cobett & hundreds of others like them. Equally crucial was+

the support of thousands of nameless men, women & children of the local communities across these reserves without whose cooperation all these good men couldn't have succeeded in their efforts.

There is so much more to add to this story of the initial years of Project Tiger, but+

for now, I end this thread with a fun trivia. Back in 1973, forest officers hardly had any vehicles (except motorcycles or bicycles), so one of the first material support all inaugural tiger reserves received was 1-2 Willys Jeeps (of which I'm a huge fan) for each!

~fin~