MP forest dept contradicts CM Chauhan on Panna

Chauhan had opposed declaring a buffer zone around Panna tiger reserve. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 14, 2012, 18:23:12 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan and state wildlife department appear to be on the confrontation mode over notifying a buffer zone around Panna tiger reserve.

Chauhan had been against declaring the buffer zone considering the local opposition, mostly from local mining mafia in the region. The same mafia fired was said to be responsible for firing on police on last Friday resulting in arrest of former dacoit Kuber Singh in connection with illegal sand mining from around Panna forests.

“People are more important than tigers,” Chauhan had said when the local wild-lifers and the environment ministry sought declaring a green buffer zone around the reserve. He also rejected any move to declare buffer zone.

Now, the internal response to the chief inister’s claim assessed by HT shows that the wildlife wing of the state government was against non declaration of buffer zone around Panna, which lost all its tigers in 2009.

The state government has already declared buffers around four other tiger reserves in the state --- Kanha, Bandhavgarh, Pench and Satpura. But, Panna was kept in abeyance because of resistance by local people, which the wildlife department described as “misconception”.

“It will be kept in mind that no existing mine get closed because of declaration of the buffer zone,” the then chief conservator of forest HS Pabla, in an internal note. He also claimed that if the buffer zone is not declared the state government may face problem in getting Rs 535 crore from the Central government necessary to relocate four villages in the core area of the tiger reserve.

Relocation of these villages is must to provide inviolate area to relocated tigers and declaration of the buffer zone will provide space for 12 tigers in the reserve to spread out.

“Or else, the tiger would die because of infighting for space,” a local forest official said.

Highlighting the conservation issues linked with declaring buffer zone in Panne, the chief conservator also said that chief inister (Chauhan) should be apprised of the facts so that buffer zone can be declared in Panna tiger reserve.

Despite a strong appeal by the wildlife department the state government had failed to declare a buffer zone in Panna resulting in large-scale illegal mining of stone and sand from Betwa river, a key source of water in the tiger reserve. Even the National Tiger Conservation Authority had repeatedly asked the state government to declare a buffer zone around Panna 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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