Report of the Tiger Task Force - PRS

TIGER TASK FORCE REPORT JOINING THE DOTS ■In other words, the revenue and the potentialcertainly exist. But the question is: does this moneybenefit the park? Or the local people?Reinvesting tourism receiptsThe problem is that, in most cases, all the gatereceipts go to the state exchequer and not to thereserve. There is, in fact, little talk of investing backthe funds generated from gate receipts to the reserve.The only state where this is done across allsanctuaries and national parks is Madhya Pradesh,where all gate receipts are necessarily reinvested inreserve development funds, staff welfare and localcommunity needs.Taking a lesson from this, Ranthambhore was thefirst to introduce a cess which was levied on eachticket so that at least part of the gate receipts could bereinvested into the park. Over the last few years, itwas reported to the Task Force that a total of Rs 6crore has been collected. But unfortunately, the stateexchequer has taken the decision to consider this‘ecological cess’ as part of the normal gate receipts,and so the money has gone to the state and not thepark. 2The Periyar tiger reserve has learnt fromRanthambhore. Since November 2004, it has startedcharging an ecodevelopment surcharge on each entryticket — at the rate of Rs 10 for Indians and Rs 100 forforeigners. The collected money is invested into thePeriyar Foundation, an organisation registered underthe Societies Registration Act. The park managersaim to use this money to continue work onecodevelopment in the neighbouring villages, staffwelfare and research activities.In this way, in just one year (2002-2005) Periyarearned back Rs 42.47 lakh from the surcharge onentry tickets 3 .Guidelines ask for low-key venturesThe flip side to all this is that tourism in tigerreserves needs to be extremely well managed toensure that the direct impact on the habitats due totourism is mitigated. The chain of command as wellas management of tourism in tiger reserves hassuffered from multiple governing institutions as wellas confusion in policy and regulations so far. ProjectTiger has brought out a set of guidelines to regulatewildlife tourism in tiger reserves. The document,with a list of dos and don’ts, has laid down the basicprinciples well.Besides other things, it requires that:● Each protected area must have its own tourismplan that should indicate the area open totourism in the reserves.●●●●●Tourism activities should not be allowed in thecore of the national parks and the tiger reserves.There should be a ceiling on the number ofvisitors allowed to enter at any time in a givenpart of the reserve. The ceiling has to be decidedby the field director of the park keeping in mindthe carrying capacity of the habitat and theavailability of facilities, transport and guides.Rates for use of cameras for photography insidethe protected areas should be drawn up in arational manner so that it does not discouragewildlife enthusiasts, but the use of camera forcommercial photography should be rated muchhigher.All tourism structures that come up in the fringeof the protected areas or the periphery shouldblend in with the surroundings.Wildlife tourism should not get relegated topurely high-end exclusive tourism.The limitation in this sphere is that these guidelinesremain guidelines and are difficult to implement onthe surrounding land, which remains outside thepurview of the forest/park administration. The fact isalso that much of the ‘business’ of wildlife tourism isorganised, managed and run from outside the parksand sanctuaries over which the forest department haslittle or almost no control.The National Wildlife Action Plan (2002-2016)says that “ecotourism must primarily involve andbenefit local communities and the first benefits oftourism activities should flow to the local people”.The plan goes on to say that these benefits should be“in the form of employment opportunities andsupport for panchayat programmes such aswatershed restoration, afforestation, health schemesand others”. There should be strict energy, waterconservation and waste disposal guidelines forexisting and new facilities, says the plan. 4Despite these guidelines and overall policy, thebusiness of tourism in and around each protectedarea has been practised differently in differentreserves.The policy documents and guidelines have beenin place for a while but they have, till date, worked inthe absence of sound information on the size of thewildlife tourism business and the present fashion inwhich it operates.Managing tourist activityWhile tourism itself remains unchecked, so does theimpact of tourism on the reserves. The most basic datathat should be calculated for each park is the carryingcapacity of the parks and the delineation zones wheretourism is permitted and where it is banned. ProjectTiger, in 2003, issued guidelines for calculating theThe way ahead 133