Core tiger areas: states may seek deadline extension

Most state government claim that it will not be easy to implement the Supreme Court direction to notify core areas in tiger reserves in the next weeks.

Updated on: Jul 29, 2012, 02:03:52 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Most state government claim that it will not be easy to implement the Supreme Court direction to notify core areas in tiger reserves in the next weeks.

The court's order this week came after it observed that nine state governments have failed to notify core and buffer areas under the Wildlife Protection Act after repeated reminders. On April 3, 2012, the court had asked the state governments to issue the notification but many of them failed to do so.

"It is a difficult task," admitted a senior forest department official of Madhya Pradesh, which has six tiger reserves and was once known as tiger state of India.

"A large number of people living inside the tiger reserves are opposed to such notification".

The state forest departments were supposed to notify core and buffer zones before January 1, 2008, when the Forest Rights Act (FRA) came into force. This was to ensure minimum protection to wildlife in the forest areas, where rights of traditional forest dwellers and tribals was being recognized for the first time.

But, a requirement under FRA --- consent of locals --- is now proving to be biggest hindrance in declaring core and buffer areas. "FRA has become a problem rather than a solution," admitted an official of Tamil Nadu forest department, where locals have opposed declaration of core and buffer areas.

Apart from seeking consent of locals, officials say, declaring core and buffer zones require a lot of ground work, which is difficult to achieve in three weeks. There has to be proper mapping of forests, where core and buffer are to be declared. The forest departments are required to conduct a survey of the families living inside the forests. And, a compensation package has to be offered if the notification hampers the rights of those living in forests.

In view of this, officials of some state forest departments to whom HT spoke say they would seek extension of the deadline from the Supreme Court to declare core and buffer zones.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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