DEHRADUN: A day after wildlife department officials said that the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) will not conduct the annual tiger estimation study at the Corbett Tiger Reserve, an exercise that WII had been doing for the past 10 years, scientists at the institute alleged that the real reason for the forest department avoiding them was because "the truth may come out regarding tiger numbers dipping in Corbett due to poaching."
WII had recently confirmed that four out of five tiger skins seized a few months ago from poachers were of Corbett tigers. The wildlife department was believed to have been miffed at WII for making this claim but according to a WII scientist, "this is just the tip of the iceberg. " "If the annual study is done properly comparing the images of stripes of tigers captured last year, it will become evident that poachers have wiped out many tigers from certain pockets of the park, especially the Sonanandi Wildlife Sanctuary zone," he claimed.
There is raging angst among a section of wildlife activists where they cite the sensitivity of Assam government where the park director has been suspended over poaching of a rhino in Kaziranga National Park last month. But in Uttarakhand the director Corbett has been promoted after all the tiger poaching cases came to the fore. They feel that this insensitivity and dereliction would also send a wrong message to the poaching community that they can get away killing tigers in Uttarakhand.
WII has also reacted strongly to the remark of DVS Khati , principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife)that the WII did not share the data of past tiger estimation exercises with them. YV Jhala, WII scientist said, "It has been the staff of the wildlife department including range officers of Corbett who had been accompanying WII scientists in field through these studies and sharing data. After these WII studies, that the world know Corbett to be having highest density of tigers in any tiger reserve across the globe."
CK KaviDayal, former deputy director of Corbett too agreed with Jhala saying, " I vouched that WII conduct the entire estimation exercise with the Corbett staff and officials and, share data with them. The data is not treated as secret as every time it is also reported by local media."
Jhala also differed with the statement of wildlife officials where they claimed that since the areas outside tiger reserves in Uttarakhand were not included in countrywide tiger estimation carried out by WII in 2014 , so they conducted this exercise in western circle, close to Corbett, this year which provided them encouraging number of tiger growth in this region. Jhala said, these areas which include Terai East, West, Central, Ramnagar and Haldwani forest divisions were fully covered in 2014 estimation and, the results of the tiger numbers and other related trends were made public in the final report.
