Bhopal: Waking up from the slumber, state government ordered a high-level inquiry to probe mysterious killing of three tigers at Pench National Park. State forest minister Gauri Shankar Shejwar shied away from responding to questions by media on Pench tiger killing while addressing a press conference here on Wednesday on a two-day Global Bamboo Global Summit to be held at Indore. He only said top wildlife officers were looking into the matter.
Despite Pench having lost six of its tigers in the last eight months, neither the state government nor forest department planned any remedial measures to save remaining 40 big cats in the protected area from being poisoned or poached.
Even, the project for constitution and deployment of Special Tiger Protection Force (STPF) inside tiger reserves remains a far-flung dream, said sources.
A directive from the Prime Minister's Office to chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for constitution of STPF and sanction of funds from the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) for the same, besides increased cases of poaching of big cats in the state have failed to stir the forest department.
A recent report submitted by NTCA on efforts made for tiger conservation before the Supreme Court judges who were hearing a PIL seeking 'ban on tourism in core areas', said Karnataka was the first state to have constituted the SPTF followed by Maharashtra. MP does not figure in that report, said sources.
Not only STPF, state forest department has also been delaying handing over of "Panna tiger reserve (PTR) poaching case" to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for long. The file for CBI inquiry is being shuttled between home and forest department for the last four years.
The then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had approved creation of a STPF in 2007 after it was revealed that country's tiger population had fallen to less than half of its population reported in 2002. Later, based on tiger abundance and vulnerability, 13 Tiger Reserves in the country, including three from MP (Pench, Kanha and Bandhavgarh) were identified for raising, arming and deploying the STPF.
