CHENNAI: Blame it on the eleventh-hour change in the plan! A 15-member delegation from Cambodia, that came all the way to study the state’s tiger-conservation efforts, ended up staying in a partially-sealed ‘illegal’ resort inside the notified Sigur Elephant Corridor at Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) in the Nilgiris.
Giving company to the members of the delegation at Monarch Safari Park at Bokkapuram in Masinagudi, owned by a veteran Bollywood actor, are senior officials of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and Wildlife Institute of India (WII). And, they have been staying at the resort, a part of which is facing the threat of demolition, since Friday.
The facility is one among the 28 illegal resorts in the area that is facing demolition. A senior NTCA official told TNIE the bilateral programme was originally scheduled at Panna National Park in Madhya Pradesh. “We were forced to shift it to South India due to military escalation between India and Pakistan. We chose Mudumalai because of its close similarity to the Cambodian forest landscape. Due to the last-minute changes, finding a decent accommodation for 20-odd people was a challenge. After arriving here, I cross-checked with WII if the resort falls inside the elephant corridor. We were told that the part of the resort in which we are staying is not on the corridor,” he said.
A WII official told TNIE the delegation’s visit was confirmed only on May 14. “We did not have enough time to find alternative decent accommodation,” he said.
In May 2024, the then forest minister M Mathiventhan had stirred up a similar controversy, after he stayed in another partially-sealed resort against which orders were passed by the Supreme Court-appointed Segur Plateau Elephant Corridor Inquiry Committee.
‘Forest department not consulted on the accommodation of Cambodians’
Meanwhile, environmentalists said WII and NTCA should avoid these resorts, and instead ask the state forest department to arrange rooms in government-owned rest houses. There are rooms available in both the core and buffer areas of the MTR, they said. When contacted, MTR field director R Kiruba Shankar said he was not aware where the accommodation was booked for the delegation.
“We were informed about their visit at the last minute. The department was not consulted on the accommodation,” he said. India is helping Cambodia in its effort to reintroduce tigers. Tigers were declared functionally extinct in Cambodia in 2016.
The delegation visited Bandipur in neighbouring Karnataka and Mudumalai in TN to understand conflict management and how to utlise technology to conserve tigers. Cambodia is potentially looking to import tigers from India.