Soon, Rs 1 cr fine for killing tiger

Wildlife poachers can soon be jailed for a minimum of seven years and fined at least Rs 30 lakh for killing endangered species, and the country will have two bodies to regulate international wildlife trade. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Oct 20, 2010, 22:55:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Wildlife poachers can soon be jailed for a minimum of seven years and fined at least Rs 30 lakh for killing endangered species, and the country will have two bodies to regulate international wildlife trade.

The law ministry on Tuesday approved over 100 amendments in the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, bringing it in tune with wildlife protection laws across the world by including regulation of species not native to India, a requirement under a global convention on wildlife.

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh said the bill, which strengthens the powers of forest and enforcement agencies, will be introduced in the winter session of Parliament after getting the cabinet's approval.

One of the biggest changes in the law is constitution of two bodies — scientific and management — to implement its provisions and regulate trade.

The management authority will be responsible for issuance of permits for trade of scheduled species on advice of the scientific body.

The two bodies will also be to enlist the exotic species found in India, which are not covered by global wildlife convention, and ways to regulate them.

"Protecting the country's indigenous species would be another role of the authority," an official said.

The proposed law for the first time speaks of using other laws such as Forest Rights Act, 2006, and Biological Diversity Act, 2003, for conservation of wildlife habitats.

"It has been done to make wildlife laws compatible with each other," the official said.

To provide the highest degree of legal protection to the most vulnerable animals against poaching, the amendments have put tigers, whose population is said to be less than 1,411, in Category 1. Other endangered animals in this category include lions, elephants, rhinos, crocodiles and antelopes.

Killing an animal in Category 1 could attract a minimum jail term of five years and maximum of seven. The fine prescribed ranges from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 1 crore.

For species under Category 2, including endangered birds, the jail term suggested is between three to five years and fine of up to Rs 3 lakh.

Teasing an animal will also be an offence.

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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