Fateh Singh Rathore, Indian wildlife conservationist. died he was , 72

Fateh Singh Rathore  was recognized as India's greatest Tiger expert to date died he was , 72. Having spent 50 years in wildlife conservation Fateh will be remembered for his historic relocation of villages from inside the Ranthambhore National Park in 1977 which was how the tigers started to be visible in day light.

(10 August 1938 - 1 March 2011)

Biography

Fateh Singh Rathore (FSR) was the eldest son in a family of 6 boys and 5 girls. His grandfather Laxman Singh Rathore was a Subedar in the army. FSR’s father Sagat Singh was the eldest son of Laxman Singh, and managed the family’s land and property in a village near Jodhpur. The village was in the desert, and servants used to be sent on camelback for miles to fetch water in buffalo skins for all their needs. FSR’s uncles, one in the army, and the other a lawyer, brought him up. His mother loved him very dearly, and was a very bold lady, protecting him from his grandfather’s anger when he was mischievous. She passed away in February 2010. He was sent away to a boarding school, and later stayed with his uncle while a college student. He was not interested in his studies, preferring to take part in dramas etc. and have fun. His uncle wanted him to be a lawyer, but his heart was not in it. He tried several different occupations, until by chance he was sent to Sariska to take up a post as a forest ranger.

Conservation work

This position changed the course of his life. He loved the forest, and grew very interested in conservation. This was in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Ironically, the first task he was given in the area which later became Ranthambhore National Park (RNP) was to organize a tiger shoot for the visit of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain in January 1961. The area of RNP still existed as a forest, although degraded, because it was the hunting ground of the royal family of Jaipur.
After Sariska FSR was posted for some years in Mt. Abu. In those days there were tigers around there. He was sent to the Wildlife Institute of India for training, in the first batch of forest officers to be trained there. Even there, he showed a greater aptitude for field work, not too interested in theory. He fared well there, and his guru, S. R. Choudhury, recognized his potential.

"Project Tiger"

Project Tiger (PT) was started in 1973 at the instance of Indira Gandhi, who was very concerned about the fact that the number of wild tigers was reducing because of hunting. Hunting was banned from then on, and 9 reserves were selected under PT. Ranthambhore was one of them. FSR was sent there as the Assistant Field Director, but was given a free hand by his senior. At that time, the area looked very different. There were wheat fields where Padam Talao now stands – there had been an artificially created lake there, which the villagers had drained for their agriculture, and he restored the lake along with Raj Bagh and Malik Talao. 16 villages dotted the whole area, with no roads connecting them with each other. The villagers lived in extreme poverty and deprivation, with no health care or educational facilities. The vegetation had all been eaten by domestic cattle. There were wild animals around, but they emerged mostly at night and were rarely seen. FSR went about carving roads through the area, patrolling it regularly, and realized that the villages needed to be moved out if the tigers were to have any chance of flourishing. It required a huge amount of tact and patience to convince people to leave their homes, and FSR frequently found himself crying along with the villagers. He managed to convince a young schoolteacher about the benefits of moving to another location, making him his wife’s rakhi brother. The villagers were given a good compensation package, and finally moved to a newly established village called Kailashpuri which had a health centre and a school, and better agricultural land outside the park.
Once the villages were moved out, (1973-5), the park’s vegetation started regenerating on its own. Soon FSR began to see the pugmarks of tigers, but they were still nocturnal. A lame buffalo had been left behind by the villagers, and when he saw the pugmarks of a tigress and cubs in that area, he knew that she would kill the animal sooner or later. One day he found that the buffalo had been killed, so he climbed a tree and waited there. The tigress soon appeared with her cubs and started feeding. She was aware of FSR up in the tree and snarled at him a couple of times. He was so excited that his hands shook as he took photos. Later, he had many opportunities to study this tigress whom he named Padmini after his elder daughter, and she tolerated his presence benignly.
In August 1981 FSR was nearly killed by a group of villagers who resented being sent away from the park area because they used to collect fees from others for allowing their cattle to graze there. He was beaten up and left for dead with several fractures and a head injury, and it took several months for him to recover. Later he was given a bravery award for this. When he recovered he went back and confronted the villagers. Nothing was going to stop him from trying to save his tigers.

Tiger Watch

In the 1990s a group of friends got together to form an NGO called Tiger Watch (TW), of which FSR was made the Vice-Chairman. At first the Forest Department allowed TW to carry out research in the park. In 2003 a young wildlife biologist called Dharmendra Khandal (DK) was selected by TW to carry out research. In 2004 DK produced a report which contradicted the Forest Department’s claim that the census showed 45 tigers in the park. According to DK’s report there were just 26. He substantiated his claim with photographs taken by camera traps, a more foolproof method of tiger population estimation than the old method of taking plaster casts of pugmarks. Typically, in a scenario that has repeated itself in many parks throughout the country, the forest department not only denied this, but banned TW henceforth from carrying out any research within the park. TW set up an anti-poaching project, and with the help of the police, succeeded in arresting several poachers and confiscating their weapons, sometimes pre-empting their raids. Poachers’ confessions were recorded on video, and a DVD was produced called “Curbing the Crisis”. The Forest Department continued to be in a state of denial and resentment.
Realising that the poachers are mainly from the Mogya tribe of nomadic hunter-gatherers with no other means of livelihood, TW has started a rehabilitation programme for them, involving the women in handicraft production, and setting up a hostel where their children can be clothed, fed and educated, to give them some dignity and better prospects in future. This is strictly on condition that the men give up poaching. As this exercise depends solely on donations from well-wishers, funds are always a problem to collect, but the efforts go on.
TW has a sister organisation called the Prakrtik Society, set up by FSR’s son Goverdhan. This organisation has set up a hospital (Ranthambhore Sevika) and the Fateh Public School for local community as part of efforts towards community conservation.
FSR always believed to work with the people to save the tiger and in a country with billion population only this people centric approach worked.

Honours and awards

FSR received several awards some of them were the 1982 Fred M. Packard International Parks Merit Award by the Commission on National Parks and Protected Areas in recognition of outstanding service in furthering the conservation objective of protect areas to society given by the Duke of Edinburgh.
The WWF lifetime achievement award and ESSO Award by Shri I.K. Gujral, Former Prime Minister of India for life time achievement in Tiger Conservation.

Publications

Picture and Articles of wild tigers taken in Ranthambhore have been published in many books and periodicals all over the world.
Some of the important books written & photographed : With Tigers in the Wild (Vikash Publications) Tiger – Portrait of a predator (Collines Publications) Tiger – Secret Life (Alm Tree) Tiger’s Destiny Wild Tigers of Ranthambhore

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