Illegal resorts, built on the forest's buffer zone are killing tranquility by blocking natural trails.
''Tigers are intensely territorial, and each tiger can have a territory from 25-80 square kilometres. But with land limited and buffer areas increasingly being encroached upon, tigers often end up being poisoned by villagers or poached as they move out in search of new territory, food and water,'' said Imran Khan, Wildlife Expert.
In February, the Uttarakhand Government had declared 466 square kilometres around the Corbett reserve a buffer zone where no commercial activity is allowed, but the decades of delay in arriving at the decision has taken its toll. A clean-up will take years.
''I can tell you that the lack of progress on buffer zones is no accident, but deliberate so as to allow for development of such activities in the area,'' said Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for Environment & Forest.
In fact, several states have been dragging their feet over declaring areas around tiger habitat's buffer zones.
- In Madhya Pradesh, six tiger sanctuaries are awaiting buffer zone notification.
- In Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka three sanctuaries each are also awaiting buffer zone notification.
- The same goes for two sanctuaries in Arunachal Pradesh.
"These are very, very important areas. By buffer we don't mean to elevate them to status of a park or a sanctuary. All that we are trying to do is to address the source and the dynamics of the tiger to reduce the dependency of the local people in the resources, which are there in the core areas of tiger reserves," said Rajesh Gopal, Head, National Tiger Conservation Authority.
For the survival of tigers, buffer zones around sanctuaries are critical. These are areas tigers use to move from one forest to another. Ironically habitats of our disappearing tigers remain unsecured - caught in bureaucratic paper-pushing and profiteering.
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