SC dismisses poacher Sansar Chand's appeal

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed an appeal by notorious poacher Sansar Chand who had challenged his conviction and five-year sentence for selling leopard and tiger skins.

This judgment was pronounced by the apex court bench of Justice Markandey Katju and Justice TS Thakur.

Chand, who is undergoing a five-year jail term, moved the apex court challenging his conviction in a case involving the smuggling of parts of tiger and leopard bodies in Rajasthan in 2003.

In 2006, Chand had admitted to selling 470 tiger skins and 130 leopard skins to customers in Nepal and Tibet. He made this confession before the Central Bureau of Investigation.

On October 4, the Supreme Court slammed Chand for killing tigers, leopards and other endangered species for commercial gains and said the day was not far when human skin would also be traded.

In a strong indictment of Chand's poaching activities, the court had said: "The population of tigers and leopards was declining because you (Chand) are trading in skins of tigers and leopards. There is no tiger left in Sariska (Tiger Reserve)."

"For your appetite for more money, tomorrow you will even sell human skins," the court had chided the petitioner.

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Evaluation team to visit Pench, Tadoba, Melghat

NAGPUR: A four-member National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) team of experts, constituted for an independent management effectiveness evaluation (MEE) of tiger reserves has arrived in city. It will visit Pench, Tadoba-Andhari and Melghat tiger reserves from October 20-25.

On August 27, NTCA had reconstituted the MEE committee under the chairmanship of P C Kotwal, with Ajay Desai and J A Khan as members. They will be in Pench on Wednesday. The team will head for Tadoba-Andhari in Chandrapur district on October 21 and later Melghat. Earlier, the panel was headed by Arin Ghosh and Belinda Wright of Wildlife Protection Society of India ( WPSI) was its member.

All 39 tiger reserves in the country have been divided into five clusters. Kotwal will evaluate cluster I which includes Dudhwa (Uttar Pradesh) and Corbett (Uttarakhand), Ranthambhore and Sariska (Rajasthan), Melghat, Pench, Tadoba-Andhari and Sahyadri (Maharashtra) reserves.

The cluster II includes all six tiger reserves viz. Bandhavgarh, Kanha, Pench, Satpura-Bori, Panna and Sanjay-Dubri in Madhya Pradesh. The committee for these is headed by ex-director of Wildlife Institute of India (WII) V B Sawarkar. Dr Erach Bharucha and Rajeev Sharma are members.

This evaluation of the reserves is being done after four years. The last independent management effectiveness evaluation was conducted in 2006. Interestingly, 740 sq km Sahyadri Tiger Reserve in Western Maharashtra, which was notified on January 5 this year, will also be evaluated. The evaluation will include array of parameters including biotic pressure, human presence, villages, and protection among other things.

The evaluation of tiger reserves in 2006 had rated Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) in Chandrapur district and Pench Tiger Reserve as satisfactory while Melghat Tiger Reserve was rated as poor. However, Melghat has since improved significantly with better sightings record.

Talking to TOI, S P Yadav, joint director of NTCA, said the committee would check if the chosen approaches in tiger reserve management were sound, adequate and appropriate. It would also see whether funds allocated were being used effectively for meeting the objectives of management. Yadav said the evaluation would be done on the basis of parameters set by Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a global NGO.

The WII has provided a pre-assessment orientation to the experts for using the new matrix, apart from collation/publication of the results with financial support from the NTCA. The report of each committee will be submitted to the WII in six months. The panels will evaluate plans to see process and outcomes of long-term monitoring of the biological and socio-cultural resources of reserves.

Read more: Evaluation team to visit Pench, Tadoba, Melghat - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nagpur/Evaluation-team-to-visit-Pench-Tadoba-Melghat/articleshow/6778138.cms#ixzz12s70iHQL

Tiger attacks rise in Orang

Guwahati, Oct. 19: The increasing tiger population at Orang National Park has become a cause of concern for the park authorities, with incidents of big cats attacking cattle belonging to the villagers located on the periphery of the park, on the rise.

Tigers have killed at least 10 heads of cattle last week.

“We fear that the villagers will try to poison the tigers if the attacks on cattle continue,” the Orang divisional forest officer, Sushil Daila, said.

The park has witnessed the deaths of at least 15 tigers since 2005.

While six of them were killed because of poisoning, the rest died of infighting.

The last incident of poisoning took place on August 18 when an adult male tiger was found ill and later died at the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation near Kaziranga where it was shifted for treatment.

Altogether 14 tigers were counted in the national park during a census conducted last year.

Unofficial figures, however, put the figures at 18.

“There is no doubt about an increase in tiger population in recent times. We spotted two cubs two months ago,” he said.

Daila said the recent attacks on cattle were being carried out by a particular tiger on villages outside the southern boundary of the park.

“We have learnt after studying the pug marks that the particular tiger is a full grown male,” the official said.

Park authorities have erected 10 camera traps to study the movement of the tiger. “The tiger could be an old one or may be injured as such it is targeting easy prey — cattle,” Daila said.

The forest official said a cage had also been erected to trap the tiger. “We will know the exact reason for the tiger straying out of the park frequently if we manage to trap it. We will have to release the tiger in another habitat if we do not detect any abnormality,” the official said.

The park authorities have formed eco-development committees, involving the villagers, recently in a bid to gain the confidence of the villagers.

Spread over 78.8 square km on the north bank of the Brahmaputra, Orang National Park is a rich wild habitat with several species of wild animals.Daila said apart from these two cubs, the park has also witnessed the birth of at least 10 rhino calves in the past few months.

“This is a positive development,” he said.

Sixty-four rhinos were detected at Orang during the census conducted last year.

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