SC ruling to end mining around tiger reserves, parks

What the Central government failed to achieve in years, the Supreme Court did with a single stroke. On Tuesday, the apex court asked all state governments to notify core and buffer zones in 41 tiger reserves, over 600 wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in the next three months.

Updated on: Apr 6, 2012, 24:16:02 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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What the Central government failed to achieve in years, the Supreme Court did with a single stroke. On Tuesday, the apex court asked all state governments to notify core and buffer zones in 41 tiger reserves, over 600 wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in the next three months.

The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, mandated every state to notify core and buffer zone in each wildlife area. Despite the specific clause in the law, the state governments had refused to implement it for political and socio-economic reasons.

India’s tiger state Madhya Pradesh had refused to notify the buffer or peripheral zone in Panna tiger reserve citing political constraint. State chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had gone on record against notification of buffer zones and local BJP leaders have threatened agitation if the buffer --- home for diamond mining --- is demarcated.

In Rajasthan, the buffer in both Sariska and Ramthambore has not been notified as number of resorts and state highways fall in the buffer zone. Similar is the case with Dudhwa tiger reserve in Uttar Pradesh and Sahyadari in Maharashtra.

Of the 41 tiger reserves in India, 15 have not notified the buffer area. Except, Valmiki tiger reserve in Bihar, all others tiger reserves have notified a core-critical or inviolate (safe tiger areas) tiger areas. An area of 800-1,000 sq km should be core area and remaining forest land should be notified as buffer.

According to National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), mining or industrial activity is debarred in buffer zones. Only restricted tourism is allowed, an official said. The court’s order could have huge implications as there could be new restrictions on commercial activity in the buffer.

Once all tiger reserves notify core and buffer zones, the government plans to ban tourism in the core areas on the ground that human disturbance leads to inbreeding. “Entire tourism would be restricted to the buffer,” an official said. The NTCA has already issued guidelines on allowing tiger safari in buffer zones.

The NTCA has constituted a committee of experts on tourism in tiger reserve which is expected to submit its report by March 17. The committee is examining environment ministry’s draft guideline which proposes to impose 30 % tax on tiger tourism and provide for sustainable tourism.

The Supreme Court had sought tiger tourism guidelines once the committee submits its report and is expected to issues directions on tourism in and around tiger reserves.

The court’s order came on an innocuous petition, where Right To Information activist Ajay Dubey, had challenged the decision of the Madhya Pradesh high court not to ban tourism activity inside core areas of tiger reserves in the state. The NTCA had supported Dubey’s petition.

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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