A male tiger spotted on camera in the village of Surla in the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary brings the focus on the tiger and conservation of the animal into the news again. Even the State’s Environment Secretary tweeted a picture of the tiger with the comment that lockdown rules don’t apply to all. As per the locals of the area, this tiger is a ‘resident’ of the forest area, one of three that have made Surla, Chorla in Goa and Hulund in Karnataka their home. The tiger, spotted at Surla was earlier reported to have been seen in Golali village, where four tigers were found killed in January last year. Will this tiger spotting spur the government in taking the tiger reserve proposal forward?
Last month Herald had reported in detail on how for the past one decade Goa has been sitting on the letter of the then Union Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh to then Goa Chief Minister Digambar Kamat to send a proposal for a tiger reserve in the State. There has been no action taken by any of the governments on this letter in the past ten years, and in the meantime there have been four tigers killed in Sattari last year in January. This is a clear indication that protection for the tiger is definitely not what it should be.
To recap, the request from the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to submit a proposal to declare the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary as a tiger reserve came when Kamat was Chief Minister. There have been two State assembly elections since then and another is due some seven months hence. Four different chief ministers have administered the State, but the progress in making any move towards a tiger reserve for Goa has been nil. The National Wildlife Board (NWB) and the National Tiger Conservation Authority support such a reserve. So why is Goa delaying taking this forward?
In the past, there have been even questions raised on whether there were tigers in Goa or whether the big cats strayed into the State from Karnataka. The question was raised to obfuscate the issue and keep the tiger reserve proposal pending. It actually did work as no progress was made. The camera trap method of identifying tigers that has documented the animal in the State forests should have put this speculation at rest, but the government still vacillates on the proposal for a tiger reserve.
Despite much lobbying by environmentalist and wildlife enthusiasts for a tiger reserve, this has not happened. The closest that anybody in government came to making a positive statement on the tiger reserve proposal was in February 2016, when the then Forests minister said that the State was willing to protect the tiger and declare the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary a tiger reserve provided the animal census that was on at that time proved that the forests of Goa indeed are home to the tigers. The census did prove the presence of the tiger, but the tiger reserve proposal never came about.
Ten years is a long time to wait for the tiger reserve to take shape. The process is anyway lengthy and Goa has already lost a lot of time. Even starting now, it will be years before the reserve can become a fait accompli, but to protect the few remaining tigers, this is extremely necessary. The added benefit of a tiger reserve would be preserving the biological and ecological area that makes up the tiger habitat, besides obtaining Central funds for the maintenance and protection of the forest, improvement of the habitat and eco-development of the people living in the buffer areas of the reserve. If at all this has to happen, Goa has to act now.
