The committee of the National Tiger Conservation Authority formed under the Ministry of Environment and Forests has given its approval in-principle on Wednesday for creating of four new Tiger Reserves in the country and also for treating one park as a separate Reserve.
Owing to illegal poaching, tigers have become quite rare these days in India. Tiger trade is very profitable using for medicinal and magical purposes. Besides, they are killed for their valuable skins and other body parts. Tiger skin though are not very fashionable, but are used in making fur coats and rugs, which has a huge demand in international market.
Even after imposing ban by the Indian government declaring tiger trade is illegal, poaching of tigers have been continuously increasing.
In its effort to preserve these magnificent predators from extinction, the Government of India (GoI) under conservation programme had launched “Project Tiger” in 1972.
Keeping its continuous effort to save the endangered species of tigers, the committee of the National Tiger Conservation Authority formed under the Ministry of Environment and Forests has given its approval in-principle for creating of four new Tiger Reserves in the country and also nod for treating one park as a separate Reserve.
The four reserves will be opened with the name of Sunabeda Tiger Reserve in Orissa, Shahayadri Tiger reserve in Maharashtra, Pilibhit Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pardesh, and Ratapani Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh.
Also, the Nagarahole National Park in Karnataka will be treated as the separate reserve. The park earlier was a part of Bandipur Tiger Reserve.
Several other proposals including funding support for research and monitoring through the Wildlife Institute of India, contractual arrangement for NTCA staff, radio telemetry monitoring of tigers, awareness programme, support to NGOs with MoU for capacity building, research and tiger estimation and tiger reintroduction are also taken into notice by the Authority to give practical shape.
The Authority also took note of the recent all India tiger estimation findings and protection strategy in tiger reserves.
Since the establishment of Tiger Reserves in 1972 with 9 Reserves in 1973-74, the figure had gone up to 29 by 2006.
In 1972, the population of tigers was just 1827, which after the government's precautionary measures rose to 3015. Further it increased to 4005 in 1984 and 4334 in 1989. A decline had been noticed in the year 1993 with 3750 tigers which again declined to 3508 in 1997. A slight improvement in tiger's figure was noticed during 2001-02.
The total area covered under these reserves at present are 38,620 Square km, which is 1.17 percent of the total geographical area of the country.
The largest Tiger reservoirs in India are Gir forest (Gujarat), Bandipur Sanctuary (Karnataka), Srisailam Wild Life Sanctuary (A.P.), and Dandakaranya (M.P.).
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Comments:
Dr. Ajoy Bhattacharjya
May 24, 2008 at 12:00 AM
The tigris panthera also lets the government of India and the West Bengal State government earn a pretty few dollars through the world widelife fund and etc. The greedy British auctioned the Sundarbans in lots and the Bengali gentry became zamindars after buying them. The British raj and the zamindars brought the poor settlers there. The settlers were made to destroy the mangrove forests for their living. Now the governments exploit the international human concern for love for the wild life at one side and appease the successors of the zamindars, who still own latifundisa and who are donors for their election funds at another side. The tigers have become more valuable than the humans, if you believe Amitabha Ghose (The hungry tide).