More green cover for Corbett tigers

The indomitable tigers of Corbett are set to get more breathing space with the environment ministry sanctioning Rs 65 crore for relocating 1,000 homes in Sundherkhal village, where at least a dozen people have died in conflict with tiger in the last four months.

Updated on: Apr 11, 2011, 23:52:00 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The indomitable tigers of Corbett are set to get more breathing space with the environment ministry sanctioning Rs 65 crore for relocating 1,000 homes in Sundherkhal village. Sunderkhal falls in the tiger corridor connecting dense forest on two sides of the Kosi river.

Now, in a bid to check man-tiger conflict — tigers have killed at least a dozen people in the village in the last four months — the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has decided to release R65 crore for relocation of the village and implementing the annual action plan of Corbett in the current financial year.

With the tiger population in Corbett rising to 214 from 164 in last four years, the village has borne the maximum onslaught. After Kaziranga, Corbett witnessed maximum increase in tiger population.

“I agree the man-tiger conflict is a very sensitive and major issue in Uttarakhand as in some other states,” environment minister Jairam Ramesh said in a letter to Uttarakhand chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal.

Over 40 people have died in tiger-human conflict in the state in the last six months, which also resulted in death of about eight tigers.

The digital mapping of tigers in Corbett shows the new tiger population has spread to the outskirts of 2,295-sq km big reserve, especially in the Ram Nagar forest division, where the Sunderkhal village is located.

Under the plan, each household will get either Rs 10 lakh as compensation or an alternative land. The relocation, however, will be voluntary in nature.

NCTA’s generosity may fall short of expectations as there is no plan to check the growth of hotels/resorts on the banks of Kosi around Sunderkhal. “Most of these resorts have come up on revenue land which is not under the forest department’s jurisdiction,” said a state forest department official.

Although Jairam Ramesh has emphasised on a check on unregulated growth of hotel industry around Corbett, he has pushed the ball into the state’s court to take action.

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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