Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's convening of a meeting of senior Central and State wildlife officials at Ranthambhore on May 23, is heartening for two reasons. The first is the choice of the venue which has become a focus of national attention especially after the disappearance of all the tigers from Sariska. The message is clear: The Prime Minister is interested in effective action on the ground and not endless deliberations and passing of resolutions at bureaucratic conclaves in Delhi.
As important, it comes as yet another indication of his sustained and genuine commitment to protecting the striped big cat, which was earlier manifest in his chairing of-and active participation in-the National Board of Wildlife's meeting on March 17. Without such an active interest from the highest level of the Government it may not be possible to reverse the declining trend in the country's tiger population, which has been rightly causing serious alarm. As the Government affidavit in the Supreme Court on Tuesday admits, there has been a steady decline in the tiger population due to poaching and other unnatural causes. An all-India census in 1993 put the number of tigers in the 25 Project Tiger reserves across the country, covering a total area of roughly 33,000 sq km, at 3,750. According to optimistic current estimates, the number is 3,000 while pessimistic one puts it around 1,000.
It is no secret that a major cause of the continuing decline in the number of Tigers in the country is poaching, which caters to the highly organised international trade in tiger skins and body parts. Hence attempts to curb poaching in the reserves have to be accompanied by measures to end this savage trade. It was with this twin objective in view that the National Board of Wildlife had decided at its meeting on March 17 to set up a National Wildlife Crime Prevention and Control Bureau (NWCPCB).
Unfortunately, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, which was supposed to have established it by the end of April, has yet to do so. While it is doubtless not easy to set up such a body with representatives from a wide range of agencies and departments ranging from the Customs to State forest departments, greater urgency than what has been so far in evidence is clearly called for.
The matter is of utmost importance. In a letter to Prime Minister Singh on April 12, the Secretary General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, has expressed concerned over the level of 'cooperation and coordination among India's agencies tasked with countering such trade. He pointed out that despite repeated assurances to the CITES officials that the organisation's recommendations were being implemented, there had been very little progress on the ground.
The Ministry must therefore speed up the setting up of the NWCPCB. Meanwhile, the problem of providing forest officials with adequate vehicles for patrolling, communications equipment and weapons, remains urgent. Meanwhile, the recent sighting of a tigress and two cubs in Tripura, where no tiger has been seen since 1975, indicates that surveillance needs to be extended beyond Project Tiger reserves.
