Making space for the tiger a reality

PRAVEEN BHARGAV

WAY OUT: A participatory community-based tourism plan can help reduce pressure on core areas.
Photo: Special Arrangement

Promoters of development projects in forest areas can be made to compensate by creating buffer zones around sanctuaries through minor modifications to the Forest Conservation Act guidelines
The contentious issue of notifying buffer areas around tiger reserves came under sharp debate when the Supreme Court issued interim directions to stop tourism in core or Critical Tiger Habitats (CTHs) and notify buffer areas. However, after the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) filed comprehensive guidelines on tiger conservation and tourism on October 15, 2012, the Supreme Court permitted the reopening of tourism strictly in accordance with the guidelines. Visitation is now permissible in existing tourism zones subject to a maximum of 20 per cent of core areas being used. But the important issue of creating viable buffers around a core area lost focus even though the NTCA guidelines harp on its importance to sustain tiger populations.

In most tiger reserves, core areas comprise notified sanctuaries and/or national parks, which are to be managed as areas free of incompatible human activity. Reserved forests, deemed forests and other unencumbered government land with some vegetation immediately abutting the CTHs are to be notified as buffer areas, which can act as “shock absorbers” for core areas.

Viable buffers

While notifying such contiguous forests as buffer areas may be relatively easy, the real challenge is in creating viable buffers wherever private agricultural lands abut core areas. Merely notifying such areas as buffer or peripheral areas without any viable habitat, as is being done now, may not only fail to deliver the imagined benefits for tiger conservation but also lead to hostility and loss of support from the local community.

Yet, acquiring large extent of private land abutting tiger reserves, to insulate the entire core area with a complete “wrap around” buffer that can support wildlife might be impractical. So is there a way forward to resolve this important issue?

An innovative mechanism can be created within the current legal framework with some very minor modifications to the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 Guidelines. This could greatly contribute to creating additional areas as viable forested buffers around tiger reserves.

Presently, most development project promoters seeking diversion of forest land for a non-forestry purpose have to identify an equivalent area of non-forest land. This has to be transferred and mutated in favour of the forest department for declaration as reserved forest/Protected Forest (PF). The project must also deposit funds for taking up compensatory afforestation in such lands. Stage II clearance under the Forest Act is to be granted only after compliance of this important condition. As far as possible, such areas should be contiguous with reserved forests for effective management. This is mandated under Chapter 3 of the Act’s guidelines.

Legal loophole

Unfortunately, in most cases, this important condition is relaxed based on certification by the State that sufficient/appropriate non-forest land is not available. In such cases a simpler condition of compensatory afforestation in degraded forest land twice the area diverted is insisted upon. This legal loophole has meant the loss of an excellent opportunity to create viable buffer areas as State governments routinely provide this exemption to most projects.

To facilitate the creation of viable forested buffers, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) must first revise the current guidelines appropriately to plug this loophole. A new mechanism must then be created whereby the Tiger Reserve Authority in each tiger reserve State identifies private (non-forest) land immediately abutting a reserve, based on scientific and objective criteria, to be developed as ecologically viable buffers.

Private enclosures within contiguous reserve forests can also be identified. This data must be shared with development project promoters to explore the possibility of them privately acquiring the lands to comply with the Forest Act guidelines.

There could be two possible scenarios under which this idea could be enabled:

1. The owner(s) of such identified farm land may be willing to sell the land at prevailing market prices (which the project proponent /owner mutually agree upon as in any private land transaction). The project promoter has to then transfer and mutate the land in favour of the Forest Department for notification as a reserve forest/PF, as mandated by existing guidelines or even as a conservation reserve under Section 36-A of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 under the proposed new mechanism or;
2. The owner(s) may not be willing to sell but may be agreeable — with suitable benefits — to develop it as a private/community reserve based on an appropriate management plan. There are enabling provisions in the Wildlife Act, which allow for any individual/group of individuals or community volunteering to conserve wildlife and its habitat to approach the government for a notification. While the land will continue to be owned by the individual/community, the land use will be agreed upon jointly with the Forest Department based on a management plan.

Participatory plan

This will enable appropriate development of the private/community reserve or the land mutated in favour of the Forest Department, by creating suitable vegetation with mixed plantation/bamboo/grassy patches/salt licks, etc to attract wildlife. The funding for this can come from money deposited by the project promoter for compensatory afforestation. The individual or community could then be encouraged and assisted to develop a participatory community-based tourism plan with benefit sharing as envisaged in the new NTCA guidelines. The tourism pressure on core areas can thus be reduced progressively.

All that is required are some minor modifications in the Forest Act Guidelines to include the terms “Core or Critical Tiger Habitat,” “Protected Area” and “Community Reserve” to enable identification and transfer of lands adjacent to these areas to the Forest Department by the project promoter. But for this idea to work, the MoEF must issue a proper clarification to States that, henceforth, transfer of non-forest land will not ordinarily be condoned.

This innovative mechanism, which is within the framework of existing laws, could open up tremendous opportunities for increasing viable buffers and creating additional habitats for wildlife where it is most needed — around tiger reserves/protected areas. It will not only help in achieving the true objective of compensatory afforestation, but also deliver benefits to local communities from the increasing economic opportunities of non-consumptive tourism outside core areas.

(Praveen Bhargav is a trustee of Wildlife First and has served on the National Board for Wildlife.)

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/making-space-for-the-tiger-a-reality/article4630903.ece

Forest Department staff attacked while on duty

The team was in N. Belthur village to rescue a leopard

• Anti-social elements booked by Forest Department suspected to be behind the attack
• Officials dispute ‘delayed response’ as the motive for the attack

A mob assaulted Forest Department staff who had come to rescue a leopard that had strayed into N. Belthur village in H.D. Kote taluk on Tuesday.

The leopard strayed into the village from Antharsanthe range of the Nagarahole National Park and was first sighted in the bathroom of a house around 6.30 a.m. When there was a commotion, it attacked four persons, identified as Rama, Rani, Gundaiah and Krishna, and escaped into another house.

The department staff received information of the leopard attack around 8 a.m. and they reached the village by 10 a.m.

Though the immediate cause for the “unprovoked” attack on the staff is not clear, a section of the village residents said the local people were upset about the “delayed” response from the department team.

Disputing this, the officials said the staff and the veterinary team was mobilised from Mysore and Hunsur and they reached N. Belthur within 2 hours of receiving the complaint.

Terming the attack brazen and unprovoked, the staff suspected that anti-social elements, against whom cases had been booked by the department for violation of various provisions of the forest conservation and wildlife protection Acts, were behind it.

The department team, led by Range Forest Officer A.T. Pooviah, included a veterinarian armed with a tranquilliser gun, and forester Hemanth Kumar. On reaching the village, the officials found that a large number of people had surrounded the house in which the leopard was hiding.

The staff ran for cover when a section of the crowd turned its ire against them. However, they were chased around the village and roughed up. Blows were rained in on some of the guards who tried to escape into the adjoining sugarcane fields, according to a source.

Mr. Poovaiah, Mr. Kumar, and Raje Gowda and Chikkanna, watchers, who were injured in the attack, were taken to a local hospital.

When additional police force and forest staff reached the village, the mob melted away, following which the officials launched the operation to rescue the leopard. The leopard was tranquillised and released at Kaimara in the D.B. Kuppe range.

The Beechanhalli police have registered a case in connection with the attack.

The incident has been condemned by Wildlife First, an NGO, which called for a strong and deterrent action against the “emboldened criminal elements”.

Their modus operandi is to form mobs and attack Forest Department staff on duty when they enter villages either to rescue wild animals or to apprehend wildlife offenders, according to Praveen Bhargav and K.M. Chinnappa of the NGO.

They recounted two similar incidents that were reported in the region in the past and said lack of strong action against the offenders had only emboldened them.

The police should immediately identify and arrest those involved in the incident, they said.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/forest-department-staff-attacked-while-on-duty/article4480458.ece

How to handle forest fires

R. Krishna Kumar

These are testing times for the Forest Department which is grappling with an increase in the frequency of
wild animals straying into the human landscape and the breaking out of forest fires.— Photos: M.A. Sriram

The authorities in Nagarhole wildlife sanctuary have burnt vegetation along the safari routes which is the traditional method of containing forest fires from spreading in case of a conflagration.

This is reckoned to be a practical way of containing forest fires as controlled burning of vegetation done in winter ensures that in case of a fire, there is no scope for flames to spread beyond the bald patch of land cleared of vegetation, termed as “fire line”. In Nagarhole alone about 1,700 hectares of vegetation has been cleared and burnt as part of fire-fighting measures. Wildlife activists have pleaded for roping in the local community and to appoint unemployed youth to the posts of fire spotters and watchers and thus gain their confidence. Funding is not an issue to save the forests from fires and there is adequate corpus to be drawn from the State Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority.

Meanwhile, Wildlife First, an NGO advocating conservation issues, has called for a ban on civic-related work so that the resources, both monetary and human, could be channelised towards fire protection work.

Also on the anvil are slots on radio and television appealing for the local community’s cooperation. For, the key to containing forest fires is to prevent them in the first place.

Though Bandipur and Nagarhole are prone to forest fires, the frequency of their occurrence can spell ruin to this rich habitat that is home to tigers, elephants, leopards, dholes, sambhars, spotted deer and scores of other exotic animals and birds. These two landscapes have also been recognised by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) as India’s best tiger and elephant landscape and hence merit all efforts to balance wildlife conservation with the local community’s economic and survival imperatives.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-districtplus/how-to-handle-forest-fires/article4394926.ece

‘Reach out to local communities to prevent forest fires’

Advocacy group submits memorandum to the Forest Department

The Forest Department has been urged to hire people from the local communities as fire watchers in view of a prolonged dry season and the threat of forest fire in national parks.

It has also been suggested that funding could be sought from State Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority.

A memorandum in this regard was submitted to Dipak Sarmah, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Chief Wildlife Warden, by Wildlife First, an advocacy group promoting conservation.

Praveen Bhargav of Wildlife First told The Hindu that they had submitted a list of suggestions, coupled with analysis of earlier incidents of forest fires, to officials at a meeting in Bangalore a couple of days ago. Preventive steps were described as imperative in view of the devastating fire at Nagarahole last year which reduced a vast swathe of the national park to cinders.

Wildlife First called for a moratorium oncivil works, including “urgent” year-end works that “distracted the attention of officials and eat into their precious time”. It called for closure of designated zones to tourism and pointed out that tourist vehicles could be deployed for fire protection work to transport guards and watchers in a swift manner.

Wildlife First urged the Forest Department to finalise two appropriate fire watch towers as identified in a study conducted by the National Remote Sensing Agency and the Forest Department and ensure their construction within four to six weeks.

Mr. Bhargav called for strengthening intelligence gathering mechanism to identify disgruntled elements who might be waiting to indulge in arson. This could be based on a thorough review of cases booked during the year and other inputs from the rangers and other frontline staff of the Forest Department.

However, the key suggestion to prevent forest fires was to rope in the services of the local community and make them participants in forest management by appointing them as fire watchers.

Mr. Bhargav said the department was receptive to the suggestions and Wildlife First would supplement their efforts in fire prevention and control by booking slots in radio and TV channels . It has been created with the collaboration of Kumble Foundation and the appeal in Kannada, to prevent forest fires, was by former cricketer Anil Kumble, Mr. Bhargav said.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/reach-out-to-local-communities-to-prevent-forest-fires/article4327600.ece

Satellite images contradict Forest Department’s claims

Satellite imageries by the National Remote Sensing Centre have contradicted the Forest Department’s claims that the damage owing to forest fire in Nagarahole last year was limited to a few hundred hectares.

Wildlife First, an advocacy group, said an analysis of satellite imageries was carried out from February 1 to March 3 last year, considering the gravity of the issue and the persistent efforts in the past to downplay the damage and under-report the extent of fire-affected areas.

The results said that an area of 24.5 sq km or 2,450 hectares of forests was affected by the fire, which is higher than the official statistics.

“Long-term data on the location of the fire in Nagarahole between 1991 and 1999 clearly establish that a large area within Metikuppe and Veeranahosahalli range have suffered severe damage with recurring and frequent fires,” according to Wildlife First.

While national parks and wildlife sanctuaries in the State face imminent threat of forest fires due to drought this year, no action has been initiated to nab the perpetuators of last year’s fire, they added.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/satellite-images-contradict-forest-departments-claims/article4327601.ece