Relaxed norms shouldn’t apply to tiger reserves

‘Relaxed norms shouldn’t apply to tiger reserves’

Updated on: Jan 21, 2015, 24:55:22 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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There couldn’t have been better news than the 30% increase in India’s tiger population for wildlife lovers but it comes at a time when the NDA government is planning to revamp green laws to stimulate economic growth.

Concerted-efforts-by-the-government-and-NGOs-have-helped-increase-the-number-of-India-s-national-Animal

Proposed amendments to the Wildlife Protection Act could have an adverse impact on wildlife, including tigers, if enough safeguards aren’t incorporated, say experts. “Relaxed norms shouldn’t be applicable in tiger reserves. They should be protected from developmental pressures,” said leading wildlife biologist K Ullas Karanth.

An example is Madhya Pradesh’s Panna Tiger Reserve — one of the best performing habitats — where 100 square kilometers is set to be diverted for the interlinking of the Ken and Betwa rivers. “The diversion will send a wrong signal about the tiger conservation story,” said Fayaz Khudsar, a wildlife biologist from the state.

Though the increase in the tiger population was announced by the NDA government, credit for the turnaround was also due to former UPA environmental ministers Jairam Ramesh and Jayanti Natarajan.

Neither allowed projects around India’s 47 tiger reserves and key habitats, blocking over 100 deals in the process, and were often criticised for being anti-development.

Their successors, Veerappa Moily and Prakash Javadekar, however, rarely rejected a project in 2014. The impact of this, though, will only be captured in the 2018 census.

One shouldn’t also forget tiger reserves represent just 5% of India’s forest cover and about half the tigers are estimated to be outside protected areas in buffer zones and wildlife corridors. This has resulted in a massive jump in man-tiger conflict with seven people already falling victim to the big cat in the first fortnight of 2015.

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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