Ministry blow to tiger habitat

For the already shrinking wildlife habitat, the Environment and Forest ministry has served a deathblow by allowing an Indo-Tibetan Border Police camp in the middle of a forest, a vital corridor for movement of tigers and elephants in Nainital district of Uttrakhand, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Sep 19, 2009, 01:03:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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For the already shrinking wildlife habitat, the Environment and Forest ministry has served a deathblow by allowing an Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) camp in the middle of a forest, a vital corridor for movement of tigers and elephants in Nainital district of Uttrakhand, 300 km northeast of Delhi.

The forestland across Gola river in Lalkaun area, on which the camp has been allowed, connects 1,000 sq km of Central and East Terai forests, which has over 200 elephants and 100 tigers. Dehradun based Wildlife Institute of India in 2003 had categorised the corridor as critical for sustaining wildlife in area, one of the best habitats for tigers and elephants in India.

Two infrastructure projects —Indian Oil Corporation and a Railway depot — have already been built in middle of the corridor.

“Setting up of the camp has meant that entire forest in a kilometer area will be wiped out,” said Dr Anil Kumar Singh of Wildlife Trust of India. “The entire Terai Arc landscape stretching from Yamuna river near Saharanpur, in the West, to Bagmati river near Chitwan National Park in Nepal, in the East, has been divided into two.”

The ministry, entrusted with the job of protecting wildlife, approved the Uttrakhand Forest department’s proposal earlier this year to divert 36 hectares for forestland to ITBP. Project Elephant Directorate in the ministry had opposed it.

Locals learnt about the approval only recently when the construction started. On Friday, WTI, World Wildlife Fund, The Corbett Foundation and Wildlife Protection Society of India lodged a protest saying that the decision, if not reversed, will hamper growth of tiger and elephant population in the region.

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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