A Wild Idea: Privatise the Jungles
Privatising India’s jungles may help in saving wildlife
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Forbes says privatise forests - But will it help ?
The latest edition of Forbes india proposes privatising tiger sanctuaries to protect them from destruction. Though on the face of if the writer doespresent a cogent argument about how it might help raise the needed resources and will to tackle loss of tiger habitats and the tigers themselves. But one only has to look around in cities like Mumbai and in fact all over india where public land and areas given to private business for bulding, clubs, schools, hospitals,parks etc is being used only for private interests with public access being limited. One doesnt want tiger sancturies of the country to become elitist reserves where only people with money can visit. The need is for the govt to involve private business in contributing significantly towards the cause rather than turning them over into private hands.
MOEF realises need for action
A report on DNA today cites officials sitting in MOEF in Delhi to have realised the need for local intelligence units inside tiger sanctuaries to prevent poaching. After having lost more than 60% of the tiger population in the last few years perhaps the realisation has come a tad late. Apparently hitherto the intelligence teams have been sitting in Delhi and co ordinating work from their main offices passing on what ever information they used toget to the state wild life offices and vistingparks for surprise checks once in a while. State officers would in turn send memos to the forest warden. With an antiquated system like this given the time lag one wont be surpised if by time information reached ground level poachers would have make their kill and fled the area. The need of the hour is to completely overhaul the system and show a sense of urgency to correct the flaws. Incremental steps might not be enough if we have to keep from losing our forests.
Now, a wildlife intelligence unit to fight poachers
Forest linking plan ambitious but is it viable
Readers of this blog will remember a project envisaged and initiated by the NDA govt under PM A B Vajpayee to link all rivers in the country to remove chronic problems of flooding and drought at the same time in different areas of the country. The project never took off as there was never a scientific consensus on whether it was a good idea or that it was feasible. Linking up tiger sancturies in the country though is a more feasible plan. And as we can all imagine before the population explosion of the last century destroyed key wildlife habitats large parts of the country formed one contigous forest cover wherein animal could roam freely. Bringing agenda to the table is a noble cause and a TOI report today cites it to be on the agenda of an MOEF meet at Sariska where the minister Jairam ramesh is likely to spell our further steps on conservation of critical tiger habitats. Before we talk about linking of sanctuaries though the govt would be well advised to be reminded that tiger parks themselves are under serious pressure and strain from various lobbies and population expansion.Case in point the Tadoba tiger area in maharashtra where the state govt has allowed mining to be expanded on a mindless scale and to top it shuffled offers fromkey posts as if to invite pochers to come in a finish the remainin wild life so that it becomes easier for the minigng lobby to take over the forests. If there arent any animals left to protect within the so called protected areas then little will be achieved out of connecting forest areas. The focus as of now should be maknig security inside tiger areas in the country foolproof so that further loss of animal can be stopped immediately.
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