Treat every tiger death as poaching, says NTCA

With the number of tigers decreasing rapidly, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has asked forest departments to treat every death of the big cat as a case of poaching — unless proven otherwise.

Updated on: May 31, 2012, 24:34:44 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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With the number of tigers decreasing rapidly, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has asked forest departments to treat every death of the big cat as a case of poaching — unless proven otherwise. This has been done to ensure that officials do not attribute every tiger death to 'natural causes'.

"As the cause of tiger deaths can either be poaching or non-targeted killings due to sensitive human-tiger interface conflict, there is a need to ensure adequate caution while classifying tiger deaths as natural causes," said a letter written to project directors of tiger reserves in India by Rajesh Gopal, the director of NTCA.

In the last one week, three tiger deaths were reported from the Dudwa tiger reserve in Uttar Pradesh. While the forest department believes the deaths were natural, owing to signs of struggle on the body of one of the tigers, wildlife experts believe that the animals were the victims of a poaching attempt.

In other incidents, at least two tiger deaths were reported from Maharashtra — taking the state's 2012 death tally to 12. Recently, the state allowed forest officials to shoot poachers at sight.

The NTCA has asked tiger reserves to carry out a detailed probe before declaring the reason for the deaths. Officials are required to scan nearby areas to rule out the presence of metal traps, snares and evidence pertaining to unauthorised vehicular movement. The NTCA also wants officials to check for toxic elements in watering holes or livestock kills made by tigers.

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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