BHOPAL: Ahead of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s 134th birth anniversary, the BJP-led Madhya Pradesh government has named its 25th wildlife sanctuary in his honour, dedicating it to the ‘Father of the Indian Constitution.’
The state forest department issued on Friday, a notification declaring 258.64 square km of protected forest area in the North Sagar forest division of the Bundelkhand region as Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar Wildlife Sanctuary.
The protected forest area of two development blocks of Sagar district, including Banda and Shahgarh, will form part of the new sanctuary.
Following Friday's two-page notification, the new sanctuary will be the first wildlife sanctuary, national park or wildlife sanctuary in MP to be named after Dr BR Ambedkar -- who was born on April 14, 1891, in Mhow town of MP’s present Indore district.
While it would be the first wildlife sanctuary in MP to be named after Dr BR Ambedkar, the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, already has Dr BR Ambedkar Bird Sanctuary in the Kunda area of the Pratapgarh district.
The new sanctuary, declared through a notification on Friday, assumes particular significance, as it will serve as the “protected and secured wild corridor” between Panna Tiger Reserve in Bundelkhand region and the recently declared Madhav Tiger Reserve in the Gwalior-Chambal region.
A tiger-cheetah corridor is the ambitious idea of central and state governments in the Gwalior-Chambal region of MP and adjoining Rajasthan, spanning from Madhav National Park-Tiger Reserve in Shivpuri district to the Ranthambore National Park-Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan’s Sawai Madhopur district, via the first of home African cheetahs in India – the Kuno National Park in MP’s Sheopur district.
Once Madhav Tiger Reserve and Panna Tiger Reserve get connected with the new wild corridor – the Dr BR Ambedkar Wildlife Sanctuary – it will lead to the emergence of perhaps the longest and largest tiger corridor of North-Central India.
According to sources in the state forest department, the MP CM Dr Mohan Yadav is likely to publicly unveil the new wildlife sanctuary on the Ambedkar Jayanti on Monday.
This newest development of declaring a new wildlife sanctuary in the ‘tiger-cheetah-leopard-wolf-gharial and vulture state,’ is the third major development in wildlife and forest conservation in the central Indian state, after declaring of two new tiger reserves – Ratapani Tiger Reserve in central MP and the Madhav Tiger Reserve in the Gwalior-Chambal region.
Not just that, but the state is likely to get two more wildlife sanctuaries by the end of this month in form of the Omkareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary (a project which has been pending since decades) between Dewas and Khandwa districts of western and southwestern MP and the Jahangarh Wildlife Sanctuary which will neighbor the Kuno National Park in Sheopur district.
While Omkareshwar Sanctuary which is proposed to come up in 614.07 square kms will serve as the western limit of tiger movement in MP, the Jahangarh Sanctuary is planned to come up in 6.32 square kms.