Since 2006, the environment ministry has demarcated and declared 39 'critical tiger habitats' — the core of our tiger reserves. Every one of them, wrote activist C R Bijoy recently, is illegal. This is an extraordinary allegation. To understand it, we need to go back to our most recent "tiger crisis" .
In 2005, the country woke up to the news that the national animal had disappeared from Sariska, a well-funded tiger reserve close to Delhi. Public shock and outrage followed, and the government set up a task force to look into why tiger numbers had fallen and what could be done to reverse this.
While the Tiger Task Force tried to understand why India's premier conservation programme, Project Tiger, had failed, some conservationists were busy with another set of debates. These concerned the upcoming Forest Rights Bill, which proposed to confer rights on adivasis and forest dwellers over lands they lived on and the forest resources they used.
The bill ran afoul of conservationists and foresters who feared recognizing people's rights would jeopardize the fragile protection of forests and wildlife. They also felt these rights would worsen the pressure these habitats already experience from firewood harvest, cattle grazing, collection of forest produce and other local livelihood activities.
But, existing forest and wildlife conservation laws such as the Wild Life (Protection) Act of 1972 (WLPA) already provided for the recognition and settlement of some of the rights of local communities. So, why was a new law being drafted with very similar provisions?
For a rather simple but disturbing reason: while creating most wildlife sanctuaries and national parks, forest departments had not implemented the available provisions to recognize and settle the rights of local people. As a result, for several decades, millions of people in our forests and wildlife reserves have lived in the fear that they could be declared trespassers and removed from their lands anytime.
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In 2005, the country woke up to the news that the national animal had disappeared from Sariska, a well-funded tiger reserve close to Delhi. Public shock and outrage followed, and the government set up a task force to look into why tiger numbers had fallen and what could be done to reverse this.
While the Tiger Task Force tried to understand why India's premier conservation programme, Project Tiger, had failed, some conservationists were busy with another set of debates. These concerned the upcoming Forest Rights Bill, which proposed to confer rights on adivasis and forest dwellers over lands they lived on and the forest resources they used.
The bill ran afoul of conservationists and foresters who feared recognizing people's rights would jeopardize the fragile protection of forests and wildlife. They also felt these rights would worsen the pressure these habitats already experience from firewood harvest, cattle grazing, collection of forest produce and other local livelihood activities.
But, existing forest and wildlife conservation laws such as the Wild Life (Protection) Act of 1972 (WLPA) already provided for the recognition and settlement of some of the rights of local communities. So, why was a new law being drafted with very similar provisions?
For a rather simple but disturbing reason: while creating most wildlife sanctuaries and national parks, forest departments had not implemented the available provisions to recognize and settle the rights of local people. As a result, for several decades, millions of people in our forests and wildlife reserves have lived in the fear that they could be declared trespassers and removed from their lands anytime.
read full story