Stop tourism in core tiger areas: Govt to SC

Waterside tiger view in Corbett or Ranthambore will be past, if SC agreed to government’s view. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Nov 8, 2011, 01:51:31 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A jeep ride to have a glimpse of a tiger deep inside Corbett or Ranthambore or Kanha tiger reserves may become history if the Supreme Court accepts the government’s argument that tourism needs to be shifted out of the core areas to fringe and buffer zones to protect the big cat from adverse impact of human interference.

In an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has said that “core critical tiger habitats” have to be kept inviolate and only management interventions can be allowed by the state governments in the said area.

“In such areas if tourism activity are taking place, they are required to be phased out in the fringe/buffer zones,” the NTCA, the statutory body mandated to provide safe habitat to 1,706 tigers in 40 tiger reserves, has told the court. The NTCA has declared core areas as “inviolate” from any human interference.

In most of the tiger reserves, tourists are allowed inside the core tiger critical areas without adequate regulation, creating nuisance for tigers. A recent Wildlife Institute of India report had said that most of 1,706 tigers were in the core areas that are the best habitat for big cats to survive, if human intervention can be minimised.

“Human living in tiger reserves pose the biggest danger not the tourism,” said Belinda Wright of Wildlife Protection Society of India, who owns a lodge in Kanha tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh, at a press conference organized by Travel Operators for Tigers before the hearing in the case on Wednesday.

At least two tigers have been killed by vehicles used by tourists in Bandhavgarh tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh in the last few years. Prerna Singh Bindra, wildlife conservationist said in her report on Corbett that the tourism inside the core tiger area was unsustainable and lodges have blocked the corridor used by tigers to move from the park to Ramnagar forest division and vice-versa. Lodges have been constructed in the buffer zone of Ramthambore tiger reserve and Periyar tiger reserve in Kerala.

The travel operators brought a tribal, Sansai Baigai from Kanha, to claim that they have financially benefited from tiger tourism even though the operators had opposed settlement of their traditional rights in tiger reserves. “I am not in favour of Forest Rights Act in protected areas,” Wright said, while the operators failed to inform about the revenue shared by them with the local communities.

NTCA’s affidavit quotes Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 to say that core areas in protected areas have to be kept inviolate for purpose of tiger conservation without affecting the rights of tribals or forest dwellers.

The world “inviolate” means without any disturbance by human beings and each tiger reserve should have inviolate space of 800-1,200 sq kms for a viable population. The tour operators claimed the NTCA decision, if upheld by the Supreme Court, will harm the tigers than benefiting them.

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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