Naxalites destroying tiger reserves: Census

Tiger reserves in areas with heavy Naxalite presence and influence are the country’s worst. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 18, 2008, 02:27:07 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Tiger reserves in areas with heavy Naxalite presence and influence are the country’s worst, according to the Wildlife Institute of India’s latest tiger census report that has recorded a sharp fall in tiger population.

The reason for the fall in the number of tigers in these reserves can be anything — from poaching to loss of habitat, it said.

Qamar Qureshi, WII’s chief tiger census investigator, said the tiger reserves in Naxal-affected Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa have fared poorly. “They are suffering because of Naxalism,” he said.

An official of WII said forest officials in the three states have almost acceded control of the reserves to Naxalites. Five reserves — Indravati, Palamau, Saranda, Valmiki and Simlipal — are in huge contiguous forest areas, making it impossible for the thinly armed forest staff to move in, the official added.

The 34,000-sq km Indravati reserve in Chhattisgarh, identified by WII as a “vital tiger reserve”, is now controlled by rebels. The reserve may be having tigers left in single digit as compared to 29 in 2001 census. “The figures are as per the local estimation. No census was done because of the Naxals,” a WII investigator said.

The fall in the numbers is clearly visible from the population estimation in Similipal (Orissa) and Valmiki (Bihar-Nepal border). Similipal has only 20 tigers against 99 in 2001. Valimiki has 10, down from 53 in 2001. Qureshi said conservation in these reserves is not working because of the Naxal threat, a charge Orissa government has refuted.

Jharkhand, which has 1,488 sq km of forests with habitat to support tigers, is in total disarray. The Palamau reserve, which had 32 tigers in 2001, did not report any tiger sign in the first phase of the census. “No further investigation was done because the state government's data was not amenable for the census report,” Qureshi said.

Rajesh Gopal, member secretary of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, estimated that the tiger density would range between 0.5 and 1.5 tigers for 100 sq km in most Naxal-affected reserves. “The tigers may have suffered due to direct poaching, loss of quality habitat or loss or prey,” Gopal said.

An official of WII rated Jim Corbett, Bandipur and Kanha tiger reserves as the best. “These reserves have good prey base and a healthy supporting forest corridors to allow expansion of tiger population,” Qureshi said.

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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