Only 1-3 tigers left in Panna, admits govt official

As 15 tiger reserves across the country were put on critical alert to check poaching, wildlife scientists said only “one to three” tigers were left in the central Indian reserve of Panna, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 6, 2009, 24:46:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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As 15 tiger reserves across the country were put on critical alert to check poaching, wildlife scientists said only “one to three” tigers were left in the central Indian reserve of Panna.

The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), which is conducting a tiger survey in Panna following fears of a drastic decline in the population, has been able to catch only one animal on 50 cameras in over a month’s time, government sources, who were not willing to be named, said.

On December 19, HT had reported that there was only one tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) left in Panna, India’s 14th largest tiger reserve; the official number was eight. In 2002, there were 22 tigers in Panna, which is situated in the Vindhyan Range and is spread over 560 sq km in Panna and Chhatarpur districts.

The Panna report is the first major one on tiger population since 2007, when the WII said India’s tiger population had fallen from 3,500 in 2002 to 1,411.

“There may be one to three tigers left in Panna,” Dr VB Mathur, dean, WII, said on January 23 at a meeting of a committee on the relocation of four tigresses to Panna from Bandhavgarh, another tiger reserve in MP, to sustain the existing population.

When HT spoke to Mathur on Thursday, he admitted the initial findings had confirmed the possibility that few tigers were left at Panna but refused to give an estimate. “Wait till we submit our final report in March,” he said about the study initiated in December 2008. Dr H.S. Pabla, chief conservator of forests, Madhya Pradesh, who was also present at the meeting, said he had not heard that “only one tiger was left”.

Asked about WII’s initial finding of there being a maximum of three tigers left in Panna, Pabla said “there was a talk like that” but refused to comment on the animal population until WII submitted its final report.

The Central Empowered Committee (CEC) of the Supreme Court, which is monitoring poaching cases in tiger reserves, blames the MP government for the declining tiger numbers at Panna.

“For three years, we have been telling the MP government that Panna was going the Sariska way. Instead of acting on our advisories, they just tried to prove us wrong. Unfortunately, our prediction has come true,” said M.K. Jivrajkar, a CEC member who has been monitoring the situation in Panna for the past four years. In 2004, there were no tigers left at the Sariska tiger reserve.

Valmik Thapar, a member of National Board for Wildlife, who also participated in the January 23 meeting, said: “The CEC had warned the MP government that Panna was sliding into a Sariska-like situation but they paid no heed. Today, probably one tiger is left in Panna. The responsibility for the debacle at Panna rests squarely on the government’s shoulder.” The state government had blamed the decline in tiger numbers on the presence of dacoits in the reserve in 2007-08.

On Wednesday, the National Tiger Conservation Authority had issued a critical-alert notice to 15 tiger reserves.

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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