Central team NAILS Forest dept on 4 tiger DEATHS

SURAJ NANDREKAR

suraj@herald-goa.com

PANJIM: A month after four tigers were mercilessly killed in the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary, the Central team has indicted the State Forest Department for its failure to monitor the tigers and pay compensation to the families who lost their cattle in time.

A 28-page report submitted to the Union Ministry of Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), signed by Rajendra G Garawad, Assistant Inspector General of Forests NTCA, Regional office, Bengaluru, says that the Mhadei should be immediately declared as ‘Tiger Reserve’.

Soon after the tiger deaths, the Centre had sent a team of two officials led by Garwad and Adimallayya, Inspector, WCCB, Western Region, Mumbai. The report says that the Mhadei Wildlife Santuary was of least priority to Goa Forest Department. 

“Considering the fact that only opportunistic camera trapping was done by the Forest Department inside the sanctuary, without following a properly designed survey protocol, it is highly possible that the projected tiger population size of Goa may be an understatement,” the officials said in the report.

The report says that the unfortunate death of the four tigers also revealed that not all is well with the management of Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary. “According to wildlife activists who prefer to be anonymous, presence of tigers inside Mhadei WLS is a well-known and documented fact which is reluctantly accepted by the Goa Forest Department. They allege that over the years, the Forest Department has not taken any serious and sincere steps for protection and conservation of tigers,” the report states. 


It further says that even after more than two decade of declaring Mhadei as a Wildlife Sanctuary, it is managed on an ad-hoc basis as there exists no management plan for such an important sanctuary of the Western Ghats. “It gives an 

impression that wildlife management appears to be a subject which is of least priority for the Goa Forest Department,” the report states.

The report says that the dhangars alleged that they were never sensitised about the tigers and wildlife. “These allegations gain credence considering the behaviour of certain forest officials like Vilas Gawas, RFO, Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary during team’s field visit. Despite the fact that all the four tigers had died within jurisdiction of sanctuary area controlled by Gawas, he didn’t even bother to meet us, let alone share any information or accompany the team during the field visit. The unusual behaviour of RFO, is also indicative of the way such officials and his subordinate field staff may be treating the local communities living inside or on the periphery of the sanctuary,” the report states.

About the compensation, the report says, the formalities for availing the same are cumbersome. “Though the State government has put in place a mechanism to compensate people for loss suffered on account of wild animals, the local communities feel that the procedure is very cumbersome,” it states.

The report has made several recommendations to protect the wildlife in the Mhadei, the main being declaring it as a Tiger Reserve.

Also please read – Goa a DEATH TRAP for BIG CAT?