As India celebrates 50 years of its biggest conservation effort in Project Tiger, it is important to see what has worked and what needs to be done.

I am not much of a poetry enthusiast but during my school days The Tyger by William Blake was a poem that fascinated me, especially this stanza:
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Many years later as I started going on wildlife safaris, somehow the tiger remained elusive. In fact after 13 years, I finally saw my first tiger in the wild in Bandhavgarh National park in Madhya Pradesh and it was a moment that was quite unforgettable.

2023 however is a landmark year as it marks 50 years of Project Tiger that was launched on 1st April 1973 to promote conservation of the tiger. Project Tiger has been the largest species conservation initiative of its kind in the world. While the field implementation of the project, protection and management in the designated reserves is done by the project States, who also provide the matching grant to recurring items of expenditure, deploy field staff/officers, and give their salaries, the Project Tiger Directorate of the Ministry of Environment and Forests was mandated with the task of providing technical guidance and funding support.

Some books on the Tiger are here:

• Indira Gandhi : A Life in Nature by Jairam Ramesh 
• Tigers and Tigerwallahs: by Jim Corbett, Valmik Thapar, Billy Arjan Singh 
• Tiger by Kailash Sankhala 
• The Tiger and the Deer by George Schaller 
• The Way Of The Tiger, Natural History And Conservation Of The Endangered Big Cat, By Ullas Karanth

Read the full story that first appeared in The National here: