PANJIM: Clearly nullifying the points raised by Forest Minister Vishwajit Rane about protecting the people living in wildlife sanctuaries, the High Court order anyway cited a Supreme Court case that had emphasised that the State was duty-bound to preserve and protect wildlife and its corridors.
The Court also mentioned the T N Godavarman Thirumulpad (wild buffalo case) (supra), wherein the Supreme Court held that the human-wildlife conflict is fast becoming a critical threat to the survival of many endangered species like wild buffalo, elephants, tigers, lions, etc.
Such conflicts affect its population and have broadened environmental impacts on ecosystem equilibrium and biodiversity conservation.
The Apex Court had stated, “We must remember that we are talking about the conflict between man and endangered species, endangered not because of natural causes alone but because man failed to preserve and protect them; the attitude was destructive, for pleasure and gain.”
The Apex Court noted that areas outside protected areas are reported to have the maximum number of man-animal conflicts where the wild animals fall prey to poachers easily and often invite the ire of the cultivators when they cause damage to their crops. The Court held that these issues have to be scientifically managed to preserve and protect the endangered species, like wild buffalo and other species included in Schedule I, Part I of the WLPA, and other species that face extinction. The Court stressed that “environmental justice could be achieved only if we drift away from the anthropocentric principle to ecocentric.”
The Court held that ecocentrism is nature-centred, where humans are part of nature and non-humans have intrinsic value. In other words, human interest does not take automatic precedence, and humans have obligations to non-humans independently of human interest. Ecocentrism is life-centred and nature-centred, where nature includes both humans and non-humans.
The preservation of the fauna and flora, some species of which are getting extinct at an alarming rate, has been a great and urgent necessity for the survival of humanity and these laws reflect a last-ditch battle for the restoration, in part at least, a grave situation emerging from a long history of callous insensitiveness to the enormity of the risks to mankind that go with the deterioration of the environment, the Supreme Court had held in another matter.
