To enter tiger reserve core areas, pay eco tax: NTCA

Paving the way for the Supreme Court (SC) in lifting its interim ban on tiger tourism, the government will suggest restricted tourism activity with eco-tax in the core areas and give more flexibility to state governments on its regulation.

Updated on: Sep 19, 2012, 02:14:42 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Paving the way for the Supreme Court (SC) in lifting its interim ban on tiger tourism, the government will suggest restricted tourism activity with eco-tax in the core areas and give more flexibility to state governments on its regulation.

An expert committee constituted by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) on Tuesday decided to revise the earlier guidelines submitted to the court and allowed state governments to designate special tourism zones as per their choice in core areas which have highest tiger density.

“The change will definitely create more space for conservation-friendly tourism,” a person privy to the meeting said.

The SC on July 24 had placed an interim ban on tourism in core areas — most frequented by tourists — following the NTCA’s earlier guidelines recommending shifting of tourism from core areas to buffer zones, whose demarcation was also made mandatory.

The committee, set up following protests by state governments and Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, also decided to de-link promotion of eco-tourism with notification of core and buffer areas in 42 tiger reserves. The SC had also threatened to impose penalty on states that had failed to issue the demarcation notifications.

The NTCA will provide more flexibility to the state governments in identifying green zones for tourism and utilisation of revenue generated through tourism for tiger conservation. States will have the power to allow new tourism facilities outside tiger reserves as part of the eco-tourism management plan.

The NTCA has, however, persisted with its earlier recommendation to levy a 10% eco-tax on all tourism facilities within 5 km of the tiger reserves to fund conservation. It was learnt that most state wildlife wardens participated in three meetings of the committee had no problems with the new tax proposal.

The NTCA has given village bodies a role in the preparation of the eco-tourism plan and its implementation. Tribal affairs minister Kishore Chandra Deo had objected to the guidelines, saying they aim to undermine settlement of rights recognised under the Forest Rights Act.

The SC would be hearing the case on September 27.

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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