Tourist resorts near tiger reserves to pay 10% cess

Resorts within five kilometers of tiger reserves will have to pay 10% cess even though tourists will not be allowed inside core critical tiger zones. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: May 17, 2012, 01:08:43 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Resorts within five kilometers of tiger reserves will have to pay 10% cess even though tourists will not be allowed inside core critical tiger zones.

The environment ministry is all set to inform Supreme Court this week that tourism activity inside core areas --- having 60 % of 1,706 Indian tigers, would be prohibited as per new guidelines. This is being done to make core areas inviolate (aloof) for tigers.

The new guidelines based on a set of recommendations of a committee of experts of National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) says that tourism will be allowed in fringe areas of tiger reserves through special safaris. "These safaris will be regulated by state forest departments," a senior government official said.

The guidelines had become imperative as various studies had suggested that inviolate areas of minimum 800-1,000 square kms is must if India wants to sustain tiger population of about 1,500 tigers. Also, studies have shown that human interference causes problems in breeding as happening in Sariska tiger reserve in Rajasthan.

The exhaustive guidelines also prescribe a minimum cess of 10%, called conservation cess, on the total turnover of the tourist resorts around 41 tiger reserves in India. The government, however, did not agree to increasing the cess to 30 % as suggested by Tiger Task Force report of 2006.

The money to be generated will have to be deposited in the account of tiger foundation and used for tiger conservation and welfare of people in and around tiger reserves.

The guidelines also prescribe that the state governments could charge higher than 10 % of cess, if they want, depending on the local needs. With this money in hand, each tiger reserves will have to formulate eco-tourism development plan for providing employment avenues to locals.

The guidelines also provide for a structure to monitor the use of funds generated though the cess at the reserve and the state government level.

To further provide funds to tiger reserve, the government would be debarring sharing of entry ticket, which account for about 30 % of total budget of popular tiger reserve such as Corbett Tiger Reserve, with the revenue department of the state governments.

The government has also proposed to impose restriction on construction of any kind around tiger reserves to protect the buffer zones, which house about 40 % of the 1,706 tigers in India. Incentives will be provided to close existing tourism resorts in the buffer zone, officials said.

The Supreme Court last month had asked the NTCA to submit the proposed guidelines in a case related to banning tourism activity inside core areas in Madhya Pradesh. The next hearing of the case is slated for July.

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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