Two ministries at war over wildlife zones

There seems to be a turf war brewing between the environment ministry and misitry of tribal affairs over declaration of critical wildlife habitats in over 600 national parks and sanctuaries. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 10, 2012, 24:39:40 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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There seems to be a turf war brewing between the environment ministry and misitry of tribal affairs over declaration of critical wildlife habitats in over 600 national parks and sanctuaries.

The government is required to notify critical wildlife habitats so that the state governments can relocate the people living there after settling their rights under the watershed Forest Rights Act.

Both ministries have claimed that issuing the guidelines to notify the habitats to harbour viable wildlife population of endemic to a particular forest area is their job.

The environment ministry has proposed to declare 800-1,000 sq kms in 41 tiger reserves and area as specified by the Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in national parks and sanctuaries as critical wildlife habitats.

The proposed guidelines also stipulate the process for declaring the habitats by the states in consultation with the experts. The ministry had assured to provide Rs 10 lakh to the state government for relocation of each family from the forest areas for declaring inviolate (empty) areas for wildlife conservation.

The ministry last year sent the proposed guidelines to the tribal affairs ministry for vetting and approval. Once the approval was given, the ministry had planned to notify the guidelines to be applicable under the Forest Rights Act.

Now, the tribal ministry has objected to notification and has said they are mandated under the Act to prescribe rules. As the Forest Rights Act of 2006 is applicable mostly to tribal areas in India, its implementation and monitoring is work of the tribal ministry.

Terming the tribal affairs claim as an afterthought, the environment ministry officials claimed it had notified the earlier guidelines to declare the critical wildlife habitats, which were withdrawn in 2009 after objections by forest right activists.

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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