Govt will monitor where tiger fund goes

India’s depleting tiger population sees a ray of hope. The Union government has decided to ensure sufficient money for protection of tigers across the country, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jun 7, 2009, 01:35:06 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India’s depleting tiger population sees a ray of hope.

The Union government has decided to ensure sufficient money for protection of tigers across the country.

The Central government will sign a tripartite agreement with state governments and tiger reserves to ensure that funds allocated are used for tiger protection.

This was decided by Union Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh after a meeting with officials of the National Tiger Conservation Authority — a body constituted to save the tigers — on Thursday.

The Central government had allocated Rs 610 crore for tiger protection and relocation of villages inside the core area of 28 tiger reserves in the 11th five-year plan, a four-fold increase from the 10th five-year plan. But many state governments have not utilised the money properly.

“We will ensure money meant for tigers is used in right earnest,” said Ramesh, who will be visiting four tiger reserves in the next one week to assess the ground reality.

Ramesh said the state governments and managements of tiger reserves will have to commit on how they plan to utilise the money given to them and the timeframe within which it would be spent.

Under the Rs 610-crore tiger conservation fund, about one lakh families living inside tiger reserves are to be relocated. “It is a gigantic task,” said Ramesh.

India’s tiger population has fallen to 1,411 in 2007 from over 40,000 a century ago.

Ramesh, who took over a week ago, also said states signing the tripartite agreement would get incentives to protect wildlife and for sustainable development of the forests.

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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