India to sign protocol on tiger conservation

India is soon going to sign a tripartite protocol with Bhutan, Myanmar and Bangladesh on tiger conservation, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jun 13, 2007, 17:28:54 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi,

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India will soon sign a tripartite protocol with Bhutan, Myanmar and Bangladesh on tiger conservation, the ministry of Environment and Forest informed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species meeting in Hague this week.

The protocol will be for joint effort between governments of the there countries for better tiger conservation, checking smuggling of tiger body parts and conducting joint tiger census.

While with Bangladesh, India have a common tiger reserve border, Myanmar is the commonly used route to smuggle tiger body parts from India to south east Asia and China.

Tigers from Sunderbans regularly cross over to the Bangladesh part of the Sunderbans, a ministry official said. “Joint conservation effort will help in preserving the remaining tiger population and knowing their exact population,” a ministry official said. During 2006-07 census, the officials of the Wildlife Institute of India had found that many tigers regularly cross over to Bangladesh.

The ministry said the draft protocol has been forwarded to the Ministry of External Affairs for finalisation. The environment ministry has also informed CITES about its initiatives to control wildlife crime with setting up of Wildlife Crime Bureau. India has also sought a comprehensive proposal to control trade of wildlife body parts through internet.

India alongwith Nepal is also expected to oppose a suggestion from China to allow use of body parts of tigers in farms for medicinal purpose. China wants some relaxation on ban of trade of tiger body parts stating that the ban had adversely impacted sale of Chinese traditional medicines.

India, which became member of CITES in 1976, has, however, not finalized its position on a CITES resolution for finalizing the definition of marine environment not under the jurisdiction of any state. The environment ministry has sought opinion of the External Affairs ministry and Department of Ocean Development before finalizing its position.

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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