It comes as no surprise that the State Forest Department failed to monitor the tiger presence in the forests of Goa, and to pay timely compensation to the families who lost their cattle to the big cat. The report of the Central team that visited Goa on a fact-finding mission after the killing of four tigers has been quite critical of the manner in which the Goa Forest Department handled the entire episode, and even manages the forests in general. The team was clear in its report that they got the impression that ‘wildlife management appears to be a subject which is of least priority for the Goa Forest Department’. If that doesn’t make the department wake up and take notice, nothing will.
The State is not even sure how many tigers roam the wilds within its boundaries. For long the authorities kept denying the presence of the tiger in Goa, waiting for confirmation from the census that relied on tiger droppings, pug marks and the camera trap method. But even in this, the State was not scientific in its attempts. The Central team’s report is clear that ‘only opportunistic camera trapping was done’ and that too ‘without following a properly designed survey protocol’. Based on this observation, the team concluded that it is ‘highly possible that the projected tiger population size of Goa may be an understatement’.
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One of the most important of recommendations of the team is that the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary should be immediately declared a tiger reserve. This is one proposal that has remained pending since 2011, when the then Union Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, had written to the then Goa Chief Minister Digambar Kamat urging the State to consider proposing the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary as a tiger reserve. The reason for the request was that the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary is a contiguous tiger landscape aligned with the Bhimgad Wildlife Sanctuary in Karnataka and the Anshi Dandeli Tiger Reserve also in Karnataka. With there being no boundaries for the tigers, giving the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary the tiger reserve status was important.
There has been little done to take this forward, and despite reminders from the Centre, successive chief ministers of the State have done little to seriously take forward this proposal. The only move came in 2016, when the Goa Wildlife Board decided to recommend to the National Tiger Conservation Authority that all the protected areas in the State, from Khotigao Wildlife Sanctuary to Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary, be declared as a tiger reserve. Yet, over three years later, the tiger reserve is yet to become a reality and the consequence is the killing of the four tigers that shocked the State, and made national news.
An aspect that has to be understood is that a tiger reserve will not only serve to protect the tigers that make Goa their home or stray into the State, it will also preserve the forest areas that make up the tiger habitat. It will bring in Central funds for the maintenance and protection of the forests, amelioration of the habitat and very importantly for Goa, eco-development of the people living in the buffer areas of the reserve. The last is important as not only within the forests of Goa are there human settlements that will need to be protected, there are also the people living in the buffer zone of the reserve. It is because the forest dwellers lost their cattle to the tiger, that they went ahead to poison the big cat.
There is now no need to await any more tiger census reports before bestowing upon the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary the tiger reserve status, as there is no further proof required. The government has to act positively. By omitting to speak of tiger reserves when announcing that boundaries of the wildlife sanctuaries will be demarcated, the Chief Minister has only delayed the process further.
