The punishment for killing endangered species or trading in their body parts will soon get a lot stiffer.
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The environment ministry has finalised amendments to the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, under which the maximum punishment for a repeat offender, in case of most endangered species, can be upto 10 years in jail or a fine of Rs 1 crore or more.
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Currently the maximum punishment for killing an endangered species is three to seven years in jail and a fine of Rs 10,000 for a first offence, and Rs 25,000 for a second offence.
The fine is hardly a deterrent since a tiger carcass, for instance, fetches around Rs 15,000 to Rs 30,000, while its body parts sell for Rs 3-5 crore.
“Timely and needed,” said Samir Sinha, head of Traffic India, an international NGO that monitors wildlife crime.
Once the amendments are passed by Parliament, killing an animal in the ‘most endangered’ list — or category one — will be five to seven years for a first time offender. For repeat offenders, the jail term will be seven to 10 years and the fine of Rs 75 lakh or more.
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For killing animals in ‘category two’ the punishment will be three to five years in jail and a fine of up to Rs 3 lakh.
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For killing animals in ‘category two’ the punishment will be three to five years in jail and a fine of up to Rs 3 lakh.
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Included in category one are tigers, lions, elephants, rhinos, crocodiles and antelopes.
Sinha said the amendments would send a strong message. But some experts wondered how well the amendments would be enforced. “Most courts in India are unwilling to impose heavy fines and jail terms for wildlife crimes,” said an expert on condition of anonymity.
Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh, expects the amendment bill to be introduced in second half of the budget session in April. “What we have proposed, is the strongest possible punishment for wildlife crime,” Ramesh said. “The law ministry has to vet it”.
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The species covered in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, an international agreement listing species banned for trading signed by India, have also been included in the proposed changes in the wildlife law.
“The new provision would promote wildlife research but will also check any nefarious activity under the grab of research,” a ministry official said.
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.
