Tiger on its last leg
The Madhya Pradesh government remained in denial mode for years about the declining number of tigers in Panna till the wild cat went locally extinct, but its new Forest Minister has brought some hope for the beleaguered Park with his plainspeak. Sartaj Singh’s recommendation for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the Panna fiasco, almost countering the findings of a state inquiry committee report, is surely not a magic pill and is definitely not going to win him any friends in the bureaucracy and forest set-up. But the recommendation, if followed up by that by the Chief Minister, is surely a welcome change from the stand taken by the minister’s predecessors, who went blindly by the figures provided by the forest department officers and were hyper-sensitive to criticism.
The first warning bells in Panna were sounded by wildlife expert Raghu Chundawat several years ago when the then premier Park’s priority shifted from protection and monitoring to tourism.
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