No recovery plan for endangered species in India

Jerdon's Courser, White Backed Vulture, the Forest Owlet, the Bengal Florican, the Siberian Crane, the Pygmy Hog and the Malabar Civet are among the 57 species of animals listed as critically endangered in India.

Updated on: Mar 9, 2011, 22:01:30 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Jerdon's Courser, White Backed Vulture, the Forest Owlet, the Bengal Florican, the Siberian Crane, the Pygmy Hog and the Malabar Civet are among the 57 species of animals listed as critically endangered in India.

While environment ministry now has the number of species under threat, courtesy the International Union for Conservation and Nature (IUCN), it still does not know the number of species that have gone extinct in the country.

"As far as mammals go, I know only one species, Cheetah, that has gone extinct," Environment minister Jairam Ramesh said, while admitting that India has poor record on the database of the animal and bird species it has. Ramesh has approved an ambitious plan to translocate Cheetahs from Africa in four different locations --- one each in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and two in Rajasthan.

The Zoological Survey of India and Botanical Survey of India are entrusted with the job to keep record of species in India but they don’t have database of more than half of Indian wildlife. "We have never build capacity to have do scientific taxonomy," he minister said.

It has been international organizations such as IUCN, which is now headed by Ashok Khosla and Conservation International, which has provided funds to do research on lost species in India.

In February this year, S D Biju of Delhi University had successfully rediscovered five species of amphibians, including one lost 139 years ago, from different parts of the country. One such frog species Chalazodes Bubble-Nest Frog, rediscovered in Western Ghats, had found mention in the list of 57 critically endangered species in India.

Apart from them, there are 132 endangered, 317 vulnerable, 301near risk category and 2,448 least concern species in India.

The Environment ministry in collaboration with the Zoological Survey of India has prepared a comprehensive document on 'Critically Endangered Animal Species of India' for the first time.

The area of concern for many wildlifers is that the government has no recovery plan for many of these species unlike big carnivores such as tigers, lions, leopards and elephants.

Except, Vultures, Jerdon’s Courser, Leatherback Turtle and Malabar Cevit, reviving the population of any other species is not covered under any central government plan. For most of these species, the government has also failed to conduct an census or population estimation as done in case of tigers, lions and elephants.

Ramesh said the National Coastal Zone Management Authority has been asked to prepare a plan to protected endangered marine species, as most of them are not in any of the marine sanctuaries in India. But, for other the government apathy would continue.

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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