If the impossible had happened — if a lone tiger had managed to survive Sariska’s butchers — -the big cat wouldn’t have lived long.
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For, far from being a refuge, Sariska, with its thinning green cover and invasive human presence, is unfit to be a tiger reserve.
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The damning fact was brought to the notice of the environment ministry by the Wildlife Institute of India recently. The institute conducted an ecological analysis of the reserve on the ministry’s request after reports of all tigers dying out in Sariska.
The report is scary. Almost 11 square km of forest and green cover in the reserve has been lost in the past few years. Government officials blame the loss of greenery, which is also the buffer zone between the animals and humans, on the easy access of local residents to the reserve.
The presence of 12 villages and the Alwar – Tanagiri Tehsil road inside the reserve have contributed to the disappearance of the tigers, the report said.
Tigers have not been able to reproduce in the reserve for the last seven to eight years. “Excessive pollution from the traffic on the road and the disturbance caused by villagers drives tigers to open areas. And this makes them easy prey for poachers,” a senior ministry official explained. The verdict: Sariska is unsafe for tigers.
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If the tigers are to be brought back, the institute said, all villages should be relocated outside the road and the Tehsil Road should be completely dismantled. Politics, however, is bound to come in the way. “The state government has refused to spare money for relocation. We haven’t even been able to make the Rajasthan government agree to constructing a new road outside the reserve though the Centre has already sanctioned Rs 3.5 crore for it.” Relocation is evidently a far cry.
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If the tigers are to be brought back, the institute said, all villages should be relocated outside the road and the Tehsil Road should be completely dismantled. Politics, however, is bound to come in the way. “The state government has refused to spare money for relocation. We haven’t even been able to make the Rajasthan government agree to constructing a new road outside the reserve though the Centre has already sanctioned Rs 3.5 crore for it.” Relocation is evidently a far cry.
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In short, the Rajasthan government’s request — tigers should be relocated to Sariska from nearby reserves – deserves to be rejected.
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.
