Experts question "independence" of evaluation of tiger reserves

Independent tiger experts have questioned the management evaluation process of tiger reserves, in which 40% of the reserves were found to be in “very good” state, saying most of the evaluators were from the forest bureaucracy.

Updated on: Jul 30, 2011, 19:40:04 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Independent tiger experts have questioned the management evaluation process of tiger reserves, in which 40% of the reserves were found to be in “very good” state, saying most of the evaluators were from the forest bureaucracy.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority --- the body mandated to protect tigers --- in 2010 had constituted nine committees to evaluate management of 39 tiger reserves across India.

At the first meeting of the committees, two independent wildlife experts, Belinda Wright of Wildlife Protection Society of India and Biswajit Mohanty of Wildlife Society of Orissa had resigned from the evaluation committees protesting against nomination of large number of Indian Forest Service (IFS) officials in the committees.

HK Chaudhury, retired principal conservator of forests, headed the committee to evaluate tiger habitats in his home state of Assam and north-east. CK Shreedharan, a retired IFS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre, was chairperson of the committee to review performance of tiger reserves in south states including Tamil Nadu.

Another two IFS officers --- H Sen and AK Bhardwaj– were nominated as independent experts as they were on deputation to Wildlife Institute of India. IFS officers Rajeev Sharma from West Bengal cadre and RK Dogra from Tamil Nadu cadre were asked to evaluate tiger reserves outside their cadre states.

“With so many IFS officers in the committee it cannot be called an independent evaluation,” said tiger and wildlife expert Valmik Thapar.

The decision to nominate so many IFS officers also went against the idea of independent evaluation mooted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2005, after tigers vanished from Sariska tiger reserve in Rajasthan.

“The PM wanted the evaluation to be done by a committee of National Board for Wildlife rather than a government agency,” Thapar said.

The measuring of management effectiveness of tiger reserves released on Thursday rated 15 of the 39 tiger reserves evaluated as very good. Another 12 reserves were rated good and eight satisfactory. Only four tiger reserves got poor rating.

In similar exercise in 2006 of 28 tiger reserves, nine were rated very good and 10 as good. Another even got satisfactory rating and two as poor.

“The evaluation indicates and overall improvement in management of tiger reserves,” the report said.

VB Mathur, Dean at Dehradun based Wildlife Institute of India (WII), defended the evaluation process saying it was totally independent as no change was made in the report even after receiving objections from reserve managers. “We followed an international well settled protocol for evaluation and integrity of the nine evaluation committees,” he said.

Thapar, however, wanted revamp of the entire process saying no IFS officers should be part of the evaluation committees.

“The committees should have people from outside the government having experience in different fields such as sociology, conservation and wildlife protection,” he said.

Rajesh Gopal, member secretary of National Tiger Conservation Authority, which constituted the committees, did not answer to calls or text messages.

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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