Radio collars killed Panna tigers?

A wildlife intelligence report blaming radio-collaring for the vanishing of tigers from the Panna reserve, 250 km northeast of Bhopal has shocked wildlife scientists. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 22, 2009, 24:29:19 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A wildlife intelligence report blaming radio-collaring for the vanishing of tigers from the Panna reserve, 250 km northeast of Bhopal has shocked wildlife scientists.

Panna, one of the oldest homes for tigers in India, is the second reserve after Sariska in Rajasthan to lose all its tigers within the last five years. It has only relocated tigers now.

The National Wildlife Crime Control Bureau report, giving a clean chit to Madhya Pradesh forest department officials, comes at a time when satellite-linked radio collaring is being proclaimed as a sound scientific way to conserve the tiger population.

The number of tigers left in the country is believed to be less than 1,200 (in June 2009), down by 211 from 1,411 in 2006. As many as 47 tigers have died so far this year due to varying causes — from natural death to poaching.

The bureau, which investigates all tiger poaching cases, told Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh recently that the main cause of tiger deaths in Panna, a 545 sq km reserve, where 35 tigers died within a span of seven years, was excessive doses of tranquilisers for radio-collaring, besides poaching.

The bureau, which conducted a special investigation in Panna, said the tranquilisers had affected free movement of tigers, thereby making them vulnerable to poaching.

“The findings are ridiculous,” said Dr Radhu Chandawat, who had radio-collared five tigers in Panna and claimed that none of them died as a result.

Reena Mitra, director of the bureau, told HT that her team had only raised apprehensions regarding the circumstances radio-collaring can create for poaching. “It was just our advisory to the ministry,” she said.

In both Panna and Sariska, tigers brought from other reserves, have been radio-collared to track their daily movements. “All of them are in good health,” said a National Tiger Conservation Authority official who did not want to be named.

Describing the findings as shocking, Dr Pradeep Mallik, a professor with the Wildlife Institute of India, responsible for radio-collaring tigers in Panna, said, “There was not even a single case of poaching of radio-collared tigers between 1996 and 2002 when we were working there.”

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said the report was being studied. But he admitted that wildlife scientists have rejected the findings categorically. The ministry will give its verdict very soon, Ramesh 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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