NEW DELHI: In the backdrop of red alert across 17 states after reported deaths of 10 tigers in last three months, a monitoring committee set up by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) emphasised the need for careful planning and persuasive efforts to relocate families from core critical areas in the country’s 37 tiger habitats.
The three-member monitoring committee headed by Sunita Narain of Centre for Science and Environment and Rajesh Gopal, the head of Project Tiger as member secretary also stressed on the need to replace the intrusive tourism in the tiger habitat by ecotourism carried out by local communities.
Formed in September 2008 to oversee relocation of villagers and ecotourism strategy in Project Tiger reserves across the country, the committee held extensive discussions with the Chief Wildlife Wardens of target states, heads of various tiger reserves in the Capital today.
“The families living inside the core tiger areas of reserves need to be relocated so that inviolate space could be provided to the tigers. But we have to prioritise their relocation in a planned manner so that it doesn’t create panic and spoil the whole effort,” said Sunita Narain, chairperson of the committee.
According to the committee, there were an estimated 1,500 villages or 65,000 families inside the core and buffer zones of tiger reserves. The committee was highly critical of concretisation of the buffer zones across several reserves and impressed upon the states to deal with such violators decisively.
While the committee was appreciative of Periyar Tiger Reserve of Kerala for involving local communities in tiger conservation, it was critical of soft attitude of authorities in reserves like Jim Corbett and Ranthambhore where tiger population has dwindled.
“We have asked officials of all tiger reserves to provide us with approximate figures of people who need to be relocated,” Rajesh Gopal said, adding that they would be able to collect the required data by June.
‘The government in 2008 has increased the relocation package from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 10 lakh to give incentives to the people who have to vacate the tiger reserves.
The government is very keen to follow it up and has kept it as an open ended scheme despite huge amount being involved,” Gopal said.