Experts pan zoo-to-wild experiment

India’s first experiment to transfer caged lions to wild, termed as a bad idea by wildlife experts, would be discussed by the National Board for Wildlife headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Mar 18, 2010, 24:34:52 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India’s first experiment to transfer caged lions to wild, termed as a bad idea by wildlife experts, would be discussed by the National Board for Wildlife headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The environment ministry has proposed that lions from three zoos across India should be relocated to Kuno Palpur wildlife sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh after Gujarat told the Supreme Court in 2009 that it will not part with the lions in Gir Wildlife Sanctuary.

The 345-sq km sanctuary was originally developed at a cost of Rs 26 crore to house 60 wild lions from Gir as a second home outside Saurashtra, the only lion wildlife sanctuary in India, to prevent their extinction because of natural calamities or disease.

After fighting to get the lions for over 10 years, the ministry has now sought approval of the board to get them from zoos in Delhi, Bhopal and Hyderabad.

“It is a bad idea,” said a board member, who has worked in wildlife sanctuaries as a government official for over 30 years.

“Caged lions don’t like wild areas. They are familiar with humans and would walk into villages leading to man animal conflict.”

Experts also feel that survival of captive-bred animals in the wild is difficult.

“They don’t have the capability to kill the prey to survive and face difficulty in breeding,” said a scientist with Wildlife Institute of India.

The environment ministry, however, believes that the experiment can succeed if lions cubs are trained properly and attuned to living in forests. The Central Zoo Authority (CZA) has approved the plan jointly prepared by MP government and the ministry.

In the first batch, Kuno Palpur would get four lions, including a pair from Hyderabad, a male from Bhopal and a female from Delhi. They would be kept in a breeding centre and only third generation lions will be released in the wild.

The Board is also expected to discuss the declining population of tigers with National Tiger Conservation Authority expected to make a presentation on its status.

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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