Treat every tiger death as case of poaching, says NTCA

With increase in tiger deaths, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has asked forest departments to treat every death of big cat as case of poaching, unless proved otherwise. This has done to check the forest department officials from describing tigers deaths because of natural cause. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: May 29, 2012, 22:00:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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With increase in tiger deaths, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has asked forest departments to treat every death of big cat as case of poaching, unless proved otherwise. This has done to check the forest department officials from describing tigers deaths because of natural cause.

There has been a tendency of the forest department officials to describe a death of a tiger probably from poisoning or through iron trap as natural death without examining the possibility of poaching.

“As tiger sources areas are targeted by poachers and tigers also become victims of non-targetted killings due to sensitive human-tiger interface conflicts, there is a need to ensure adequate caution while classifying tiger deaths as occurring due to natural causes,” said a letter written to project directors of tiger reserves in India by Rajesh Gopal, director NTCA.

Three tiger deaths have been reported from Dudwa tiger reserve in Uttar Pradesh in the last one week. But, the forest department believes the death to be natural on the ground of signs of struggle on the body of one of the dead tigers. However, tiger experts believe that the tigers died during a poaching attempt.

In other incidents, at least two tiger deaths have been reported from Maharashtra increasing the tally of total deaths in the state to 12 in 2012. It was only after recent deaths that the Maharashtra government allowed the forest department “shoot at sight” orders against poachers.

The sudden jump in tiger deaths around India has pushed the NTCA to ask the directors of tiger reserves to carrying out detailed investigation before declaring reason for death of tigers.

The protocol prescribed says that area where the tiger death has been reported should be thoroughly scanned to rule out metal snares/traps and evidences related to unauthorized vehicular movement.

The NTCA also wants the officials to look for signs of poisoning near water bodies and poisoning of livestock kills made by a tiger. “Besides, any history of recurring livestock depredation, human death or injury due to wild carnivores in the area should also be taken into account along with pendency, if any, related to payment of compensation or ex-gratia in this regard,” Gopal said in his letter.

The authority has also advised the forest officials of taking preventive actions rather than retroactive action. “This will facilitate retrieval of carcasses before their putrification, thereby facilitating forensic examination in a laboratory,” the letter read.

The tiger conservation body also told the forest officials to treat every tiger or leopard death as case of poaching unless there is convincing evidence to suggest natural death.

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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