JOIN USSave the Tiger’ campaign has shown an impressive increase in the number of tigers in India. The new documentary of Krishnendu Bose The Forgotten Tigers, documents the lives of tigers outside the reserved forest, who belong to the ‘below poverty line’ as described by Kahkashan Naseem in the film, the District Forest Officer of Ramnagar, a place 51 kilometres away from Corbett National Park.
The documentary focuses on the Kanha tiger forest reserve, Pench national park, Jim Corbett national park and Tadoba Andhari tiger reserve. Using camera traps and interaction with the local villagers, Bose tries to find the reality and the reasons why tigers venture outside the reserves. The film takes up the case of tigers in Corbett National Park, where the surplus tigers started moving into the nearby areas of Ramnagar and Lansdowne Forest to mark new territories and the tigers which live inside the sugarcane fields in Bhadsara Village, along with local people without harming them.
The film also highlights the cases in Goa, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu where reserve forests have been converted to protected areas, thereby making more room for tigers to move around.
The film also focuses on one crucial aspect of the increase in the number of tigers in Tadoba forest–the atrocities against the tigers by the villagers. The locals narrate the problems the face because of the tigers which stray into the villages, often preying on domestic cattle and even attacking humans.
The developmental activities in the area, mining and railway line construction near Kanha and Pench in Madhya Pradesh and the shrinking habitat of big cats and wildlife have also increased prospects of man-beast conflict. Should the tiger run boundless? Or should the big cat be confined to reserved forests, are some question that need to be addressed.
“The developmental activities should be designed in a holistic manner that is beneficial for both human and the animals,” says Krishnendu Bose, a wildlife and conservation filmmaker. Answering questions of the audience he said, “we cannot change the habitat of animals because of their varying living conditions.” He is also the founder of Earthcare Films production house, producing independent documentary films on wildlife and environment.
His most known works include Tiger–the death chronicles, Jardhar Diary which won at EarthVision Environmental Film Festival, Tokyo, Harvesting Hunger–on the politics of food in India, which won the Special Jury Award at Okomedia Environment Film Festival in Freiburg, Germany, in 2000, and also awarded at the Earth Vision Environment Film Festival in Tokyo, 2001.