Report of the Tiger Task Force - PRS

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TIGER TASK FORCE REPORT JOINING THE DOTS ■management and policy decisions.What will be critical here is to (i) ensuretransparency in the audits and (ii) make certain thatall reports are made available in the public domain.2. Build collaborative networks with researchersto monitor change.There are a number of individuals andinstitutions engaged in monitoring change in habitatsand species in and around protected areas. There arealso researchers engaged in understanding thehuman-park relationships. There is currently nocoordinated project to bring all this researchtogether. The Task Force suggests creating aconsortium that can network and facilitate researchand use its outcomes for policy directions.The fact is that tigers cannot be saved unless theinstitutions set up to protect and manage tiger habitatsare saved. It is clear that what is needed is not to createnew institutions per se, but to make the existingmechanisms functional and effective. This Task Forcebelieves that this can only happen with greater publicdisclosure, support and interest so that institutions aremade accountable and are under pressure to perform.There are no quick fixes to institutional reform. Butreform is essential and must be undertaken.Recommendations at a glanceImperatives for strengthening Project Tiger:● Political commitment and coordination at the national and state levels● Coordination with the tiger range states● Enhancing the capacity of the Project Tiger directorate and coordination within theUnion ministry of environment and forestsThe recommendations:1. Reorganise Union ministry of environment and forests to create two separatedepartments: that of environment and that of forests and wildlife.2. Revitalise the National Board for Wildlife and/or request the prime minister to chairthe steering committee of the Project Tiger for the coming few years.3. Convert the Project Tiger directorate into the Project Tiger Authority by giving itadministrative autonomy. Project Tiger should report annually to the IndianParliament so that political commitment to the project deepens.4. Create a state steering committee for Project Tiger with the chief minister of the tigerrange state as its chair.5. Create management committees for each protected area, which will include localcommunity representatives, NGOs and researchers.6. Create a sub-cadre of wildlife specialists and professionals.7. Conduct independent audits of each reserve annually and put this information in thepublic domain.8. Build collaborative networks with researchers to monitor change.For Centre-state working:9. To ensure that states follow the guidelines and prescriptions laid down for theproject, a system of a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ (MoU) with the ‘project states’should be instituted. Any deviation or default from the MoU should be reported to thesteering committee.10. The director, Project Tiger, should be delegated powers to deal with the states underSection (3) of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, especially for the enforcement ofProject Tiger guidelines.11. The role of the director, Project Tiger, should not remain confined to tiger reserves,but needs to be extended to other crucial forest areas as well that have viable tigerpopulations.12. The Project Tiger directorate should be restructured and made into an administrativeauthority at the outset. In the meantime, work should be initiated to use the statutoryprecedent of the Central Zoo Authority to establish a ‘Project Tiger Authority’. Thisstatutory role will greatly improve planning, supervision and monitoring functions.The way ahead 35
■ JOINING THE DOTS TIGER TASK FORCE REPORT3.2 The protection agendaThe purpose behind creating a protected area and atiger reserve is to provide special and additionalprotection to the biodiversity, beyond what isprovided in other categories of forests.Under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972,sanctuaries and national parks are provided with ahigher level of protection. The Act is designed toconstrain human activity and presupposes that therewill be no human presence in national parks andminimal human presence in sanctuaries. It hasintroduced a permit system under which the chiefwildlife warden can grant permits for use of forestbasedbiomass or products, but these are restrictiveand limited.The Act specifies that:“No person shall destroy, exploit or remove anywild life including forest produce from a sanctuaryor destroy or damage or divert the habitat of any wildanimal by any act whatsoever or divert, stop orenhance the flow of water into or outside thesanctuary, except under and in accordance with apermit granted by the chief wildlife warden, and nosuch permit shall be granted unless the stategovernment being satisfied in consultation with theBoard that such removal of wildlife from thesanctuary or the change in the flow of water into oroutside the sanctuary is necessary for theimprovement and better management of wildlifetherein, authorises the issue of such permit:“Provided that where the forest produce isremoved from a sanctuary the same may be used formeeting the personal bona fide needs of the peopleliving in and around the sanctuary and shall not beused for any commercial purpose.”While this is the legal formulation for creatingprotected areas, the creation of a tiger reserve is anadministrative process. In most cases, tiger reservesare created as administrative entities over-arching anational park, adjoining sanctuaries or reserve forests.The idea works to advantage as it fits in very wellwith the logic behind a tiger reserve. The requirementof a tiger reserve is the demarcation of the area intothe core (invariably protected as a national park) andthe buffer (both/either a sanctuary or forest area).The core is accorded the highest level ofprotection; no human habitation is recommendedhere. The buffer allows for people to live in. But thebasic laws regulating the national park and thesanctuary continue to be in place. The creation of atiger reserve does demand that the entire area of thebuffer (which may have been a sanctuary or a reserveforest earlier) comes under a unified control — inother words, the same senior officer controls theoperations of the department related to the buffer aswell as the core area. This is meant to generate acohesive and comprehensive management plan forthe entire tiger reserve.The focus in the tiger reserves is to increaseinfrastructure for protection. Till date, increasingprotection has been considered the equivalent ofincreasing the infrastructure for protection. TheTiger Task Force, in collaboration with the ProjectTiger directorate, has assembled data on some vitalelements of current infrastructure to understandwhere the lacunae lie. The Project Tiger directoratealso provided the Task Force with detailed allocationand expenditure statements for each tiger reserve.Analysis of these is vital to understand the source ofweakness in the field and to see if these have beenmisinterpreted, resulting in non-workable strategies.Funds and protectionAn analysis of funds allocated for each tiger reservereveals some important trends:1. The oldest reserves such as Kanha in MadhyaPradesh, Corbett in Uttaranchal or Ranthambhore inRajasthan may have received the highest amount oftotal funds since the inception of the programme. Butwhen this is analysed against the number of yearssince the reserve has been set up, the picturechanges.2. Instead of Kanha or Corbett, the reserves thathave received the highest average yearly allocationare Bhadra in Karnataka, Panna in Madhya Pradeshand Tadoba-Andhari in Maharashtra. These reservesreceived over Rs 1 crore annually. Older reserves likeKanha or Corbett slip to 5 th and 7 th positionsrespectively in this respect.3. The annual average allocation across the countryis Rs 72.12 lakh per reserve per year since theinception of the programme.4. But if what is allocated to a reserve is seen asproportional to the area the reserve covers, interestingfindings appear. This is assuming that the larger thearea, the higher the money needed for its managementand protection. This estimation does not take into36 The way ahead
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04Action plan for changeKey recomme
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05References
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