Audits Gone Wild

Wildlife operators need certification to minimise tourism’s impact

ABHISHEK BEHL

India Program Director, TOFT

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 21, Dated May 31, 2008

MY INTEREST in wildlife and conservation started when I was very young. My father works in the tea industry and we lived next to Buxa Tiger Reserve and Jaldapara Bird Sanctuary in the northeast. As a small boy, I would play with beetles and grasshoppers and see wild leopards, tigers and rhinos on our bungalow premises. I witnessed a lot of human-animal conflict in the plantations as well and as a young man, this background helped hone my academic interests. I received a BA in Tourism with a focus on wildlife management and later an MSc in Wildlife Conservation and Tourism from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, in the UK.

It was there that I learned the extent of the role of responsible tourism as a vital conservation tool and the methods employed to mitigate the impact of tourism on fragile environments in Africa and South America. Very little was said, if at all, about India and I knew there was scope for a lot more research on the subject. This was when I was introduced to Julian Matthews and TOFT (Travel Operators for Tigers Campaign).

On my return to India, I started as program manager with TOFT and eventually became their India Program Director. In January 2005, when The Indian Express broke the news that Sariska Tiger Reserve had lost all its tigers, alarm bells started to ring throughout the world. Many new travel operators began to join TOFT in advocating and supporting improved tourism practices in India, with specific guidelines for operators, service and accommodation providers, as well as visitors.

TOFT created a benchmark for wildlife practices by developing India’s first wilderness certification rating for wildlife lodges. Today, we work in six Indian National Parks. We have 49 lodges as our members and 30 lodges have signed up to the PUG (Practices Under Guidelines) certification audit. This involves formal and informal audit processes with a strict scientific background. The data collected is analysed to assess the lodge’s individual contribution in their own area, after which a final rating is given.

TOFT believes in working with individual lodges to enhance their practices through feedback. The process of certification focuses on points such as the generation of local employment, the use of local produce, local development, the building of socio-cultural cooperative structures, nature conservation practices, interpretation and guiding.

We have now expanded to become a pioneering International “collective action” campaign, with travel professionals volunteering support. We have over 120 members worldwide within the nature travel industry, who send visitors to India’s wildlife parks to advocate, endorse and support enhanced conservation efforts.

TOFT aims to empower local communities by getting them involved in wildlife tourism and to initiate low-impact, sustainable development, which will help conserve parks and benefit communities through employment and business opportunities. We also aim to catalyse initiatives through lodge communities in national parks that would enhance wildlife conservation and community support, including waste and water management, trade cooperatives, local employment, fair wages and local enterprises and services. In a nutshell, TOFT is a tourism supply chain pressure group.

Indian wildlife tourism is expanding fast and major operators are looking to invest in this growing economy. Currently, tourism marketing exerts a major negative pressure on national parks. Most of India’s wilderness operators promote the tiger as the sole attra - ction on offer.

It is interesting to compare Indian operators with their African counterparts.

India has some of the world’s most staggering and beautiful wildlife. It harbours 15 different species of wild cats and over 1,200 species of birds. The Indian peninsula, housing one of the richest diversities of life forms on earth, is a veritable Eden. Today, it is under siege like never before and yet, remarkably, it survives in all its diverse forms — from the high mountains of the Himalayas to the rich tropical forests of the Western Ghats; from the deserts of Thar to the cloud forests and swamps of Eastern India and the Sal and teak forests of Central India.

Education should be the prime concept in a wildlife experience, we believe. So TOFT also encourages travel professionals to think out of the box in terms of marketing wilderness: for example, they could offer interactive options in a village, like homesteads, bike rides and nature walks.

Wildlife tourism brings millions of dollars of revenue for the Indian travel industry and yet, only a tiny, negligible fraction is reinvested in conserving the very parks visitors plan to visit. So, the next time you take a safari, do make sure that your choices have been responsible and that they benefit the destination that you have enjoyed visiting.