Environment, Forest ministry to be split

The National Board for Wildlife headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday decided to divide the Environment and Forest ministry into two departments — one for environment and another for forests and wildlife.

Updated on: Mar 19, 2010, 24:42:21 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The National Board for Wildlife headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday decided to divide the Environment and Forest ministry into two departments — one for environment and another for forests and wildlife.

There has been a long demand by wildlife conservationists that forests and wildlife should be separate departments headed by an Indian Forest Service official.

Forests cover about 23 per cent of India’s geographical area and have one of the richest reserves of mineral wealth.

But, most civil society groups believe that because of poor forest and wildlife management many of these areas are in the bad shape.

“The PM also approved ministry’s proposal for wildlife management policy on the lines of environment policy,” a board member said.

Apart from it, the ministry will also come up with comprehensive scheme to protect all species listed as endangered under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

Environment and Forest minister Jairam Ramesh also briefed the PM about the progress of the project to import Cheetahs from Africa and release them in wild.

The ministry is conducting a feasibility study in four states — Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh — to find appropriate location to release the animals, which went extinct from India more than 30 years ago.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority made a presentation on status of tiger population in India and efforts made by the ministry to protect the animal, listed as most endangered for extinction by international NGO WWF in 2010.

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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