NEW DELHI, MARCH 27. Tigers in Orissa are under threat. Their survival now depends on a variety of factors, the removal of which could help them see another day. A few decades ago the distribution of tigers in the forests of Orissa was wide and almost most districts of the State harboured them. But since the early 1980s many forest areas have started feeling the pressure of deforestation, and poaching.
Wild Orissa, a non-governmental organisation, believes deforestation due to shifting cultivation, construction of large dams and reservoirs and encroachments have played a major role in the depleting tiger population. Except from the Similipal Tiger Reserve, Orissa's only tiger reserve where tigers have remained static for more than a decade, the onslaught on the tiger habitat has been severe.
Forests of the Sunabeda Wildlife Sanctuary in Nuapara district has shown a healthy increase in tiger numbers since 1995, and this forest patch along with the forests of adjoining the Khariar Forest division have the best potential for survival of tigers after Similipal, Kulamani Deo of Wild Orissa points out. Wild Orissa has carried out intensive campaigns since 1997 for inclusion of the forests of Satkosia-Gorge and Baisipalli under the Project Tiger scheme. There has been a delay on the part of the Union Government to bring these under the scheme. Satkosia has always been severely hit by an organised timber and ivory mafia, and its inclusion under the Project Tiger scheme may reverse this trend, Mr. Deo suggests.
Project Tiger
Wild Orissa believes that inclusion under the Project Tiger scheme will be an extra emphasis on tiger conservation by way of receipt of more funds from the Centre, receipt of more equipments such as vehicles, wireless sets, and arms from external agencies, reorienting the priorities of the forest personnel from forest protection to specific tiger conservation and wildlife conservation in general.
Due to problems of deforestation and poaching of herbivores, which is rampant in the forests of Orissa, tiger population in almost most of the districts have shown a downward trend The Sariska Syndrome has been seen here for the past decade in Nowrangpur, Puri, Dhenkanal, Deogarh, Sundargarh, Keonjhar, Balasore, Bhadrak, Jajpur, Kendrapara, Cuttack, Jagatsinghpur, Bolangir, Parlakhemundi, Koraput, which once harboured a very healthy population of wild tigers and are now totally devoid of any.
