Big cats find a new home — Goa's Mhadei sanctuary

Your leisure trip to Goa will soon have an added advantage - tracking wild tigers. Environment wants Goa government to submit to declare Mhadei wildlife sanctuary as a tiger reserve. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 3, 2011, 23:49:38 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Your leisure trip to Goa will soon have an added advantage — tracking wild tigers.

Over 35 tigers have been found residing in Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary in north Goa, about 60 to 90 kms from hot tourism hot spot beaches such as Anjum, Bombolin and Colva.

Goa was not a traditional home for tigers but in the last few years, tigers from neighbouring Bimgad and Anshi Dandeli tiger reserves in Karnataka had visited forests areas in Sattari Taluk of north Goa because of biotic pressures.

"There is evidence to show that tigers in Goa are not merely transient animals and but are resident population as," Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh said.

Mhadei sanctuary is a contiguous tiger landscape with tiger areas in Karnataka.

In the recent few years, tiger numbers have increased in the landscape in Western Ghats pushing the tigers to look for new habitats.

"Tigers can travel long distances to find their home base and it has also happened in case of Goa," said an official of the National Tiger Conservation Authority.

The Dehraduun-based Wildlife Institute of India has spotted 35 tigers in Mhadei, situated in Sattauri Taluk of north Goa and said the sanctuary has a good habitat for maintaining a stable tiger population.

Ramesh, in a letter to Goa chief minister Digambar Kamat said there was considerable support for the creation of a tiger reserve and wildlife conservation. "By declaring Mhadei wildlife sanctuary as a tiger reserve, we could also ensure the long-term protection of bio-diversity rich areas," he said.

The state government has been asked to submit a proposal to declare the wildlife sanctuary, which has been so far out of bounds for tourists, as a tiger reserve.

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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