Increase forest cover for big cats: Centre

Govt wants state governments to improve the forest cover around tiger habitats following WII report that tiger population in Central India has declined by over 50 per cent, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 25, 2007, 04:10:52 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Centre wants state governments to improve the forest cover around tiger habitats following Wildlife Institute of India’s (WII) report that tiger population in Central India has declined by over 50 per cent.

A senior environment and forest ministry official said the states have been asked to look into the problem area — falling green cover outside the tiger reserves. “The green buffer area around the tiger reserves has shrinked,” said Q. Quereshi, a senior scientist with the institute.

A recent WII report stated that tiger habitat in most parts of India has declined by over 50 per cent, endangering the survival of the big cat.

A need to develop forest corridors between Kanha and Pench tiger reserves in Madhya Pradesh (MP), Satpura and Tadhohari in MP, Melghat reserve in Maharashtra and Indravati in Chhattisgarh has been laid down for the state governments.

Conservation experts on Thursday discussed the measures to protect the tigers including strengthening the field-level mechanism to combat poaching.

The average age of forest guards is close to 50 years and a large number of posts are still lying vacant, an official said, adding that the weapons with the guards are outdated.

Blinda Wright of Wildlife Protection Society of India said that anti-poaching measures are key to prevent tiger killings. “There is a huge demand for tiger body parts all over the world. The only way to save them is to protect them from poachers,” she said.

The government had notified a Wildlife Crime Bureau to check inter-state crime related to tiger body parts but it is yet to begin work. “The Cabinet will soon decide on the strength of the bureau,” an official said.

The finance ministry has asked the Tiger Conservation Authority to reduce the bureau’s manpower. The institute recently detected a huge shortage of prey for the tigers resulting in more intense human-animal conflict. A number of cases of tiger poisoning have also been reported from Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Quereshi said, the core area of tiger reserves cannot hold more than a particular number of tigers and therefore, providing enough prey outside the core area is important.

Chandrawut, a tiger expert, termed the decline in tiger population as a ‘serious crises’ and said the Prime Minister should issue direction to states to redress the issue.

chetan@hindustantimes.com

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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