NTCA approves road-map for tiger protection

The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) on Tuesday approved the road-map of over Rs 600 crore for tiger protection, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Nov 28, 2006, 22:44:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) on Tuesday approved the road-map of over Rs 600 crore for tiger protection and decided to ask states to launch a special recruitment drive to fill the vacancies at the field level with preference to forest dwellers.

In the first meeting of the authority chaired by Environment and Forest minister A Raja, the authority also directed the states to relax norms, if necessary and fill the vacancies within a year. About 50 per cent of field staff in tiger reserves is vacant and the average age of the staff is more than 50 years.

The authority also discussed the proposal of the ministry to seek over Rs 600 crore from the government for tiger conservation in the 11th five-year plan. Of this, about Rs 70 crore is for anti-poaching measures, about Rs 50 crore for giving compensation for man-animal conflict, Rs 100 crore for creating buffer zones and Rs 200 crore for relocation of villages from 'crucial' habitats in tiger reserves within five years. The money sought is as per the suggestions in the final approach paper of the Planning Commission.

According to authority members, the issue of relocation dominated the discussions with emphasis on better man-animal cooperation. "There was a concerted view that relocation should be done only where it is necessary," a member said. In view of this, the authority decided to ask the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) to conduct a study of all national parks and sanctuaries and prioritise the villages that needs relocation in the next five years. "The need of the increase in wildlife population has to be considered," a member said.

The authority also decided to constitute a committee headed by Professor Madhav Gadgil to suggest parameters for independent monitoring of the reserves and fostering field research. A monitoring lab will also be set up at WII, Dehradun. The authority will ask Rs 1.40 crore for this purpose from the government.

In a bid to contain insurgency and Naxalite intrusion in the tiger reserves, the authority decided to a constitute a committee of experts from NCTA, officials from the ministry of Home Affairs, Panchayati Raj ministry, ministry of Social Justice, ministry of Tribal Affairs and Chief Wildlife Wardens of the states. In addition, the proposal to deploy ex-Army men in these reserves would also be deliberated by this committee.

The members were also informed about the progress of Tiger Census being carried out and were told that by next year the results of the census will be announced.

Email Chetan Chauhan: 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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