Tourist hub Goa gets a new attraction – tigers

Goa, synonymous with sun, sea and surf, may soon have a new attraction — tigers. For the first time, cameras put up by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) caught a big cat strolling in the state’s Mhadei sanctuary last week. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 27, 2013, 09:18:21 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Goa, synonymous with sun, sea and surf, may soon have a new attraction — tigers.

This-tiger-was-caught-on-camera-in-Mhadei-sanctuary-last-week-Goa-Forest-Department

For the first time, cameras put up by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) caught a big cat strolling in the state’s Mhadei sanctuary last week. And then on Thursday, a tigress and two cubs were photographed.

The findings give hope that the state government will now declare the sanctuary, located in the ecologically-rich Western Ghats, a tiger reserve.

Such a proposal was made two years ago, when then environment minister Jairam Ramesh asked the Goa government to declare 500sqkm of the Mhadei region a tiger reserve after initial indications of the presence of tigers.

But the state government was reluctant, apparently due to opposition from the strong mining lobby. The Mhadei region — half of which has been damaged by mining — has rich ore reserves and notifying it as a tiger reserve would have meant no mining.

Officially, the government said there wasn't enough evidence of Mhadei being home to tigers on a permanent basis.

That doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

The camera traps were installed a few months ago, after reports of pugmarks and scat (tiger droppings). The main objective was not only to see if the area had any big cats but also to find out if they were just travelling in search for food after crossing over from neighbouring Karnataka and Maharashtra.

On Friday, Goa's chief wildlife warden, Richard D'Souza, said: "There are tigers in an area of around 200sqkm." Evidence with the state forest department suggests there are at least half a dozen tigers in Goa.

The pictures will now be matched with the WCS database to find out if these tigers are unique to Goa - the animals can be identified by their stripes. Once the WCS report is in, the forest department plans to push the notification of declaring the region a tiger reserve.

And if that happens, the department will get additional funds from the National Tiger Conservation Authority for protection and conservation of the endangered species.

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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