FOREST GUMPTION - Proposed amendments in forest bill

The Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Bill seeks to beef up the existing law. But the new law will fail to make an impact unless efforts are made to enforce it rigorously, argues V. Kumara Swam

The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, (WPA) is the most important law in the country for the protection of animals in the wild. The WPA provides definitions and guidelines on protected areas, matters related to trade in wildlife and punishments for those violating the law. Despite that, up till now the law has not been very effective in punishing offenders. For instance, more than 800 tigers have been killed in India since 1995, but very few poachers have been brought to book. To address the weaknesses in the current law, the Union ministry of environment and forests has come up with a draft bill — Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Bill, 2010. The bill seeks to bring about some sweeping changes to the existing law, including beefing up the fines and jail terms for the convicted. In its ‘statement of objects and reasons’ the draft bill says, “The current penalties have failed to act as deterrents with few convictions having taken place since the Act came into force. Furthermore, there is no strong financial disincentive that prevents poachers and smugglers from engaging in illicit wildlife trade, which, in terms of value, ranks only behind the illegal trade in arms and narcotics.” While wildlife experts have welcomed some provisions of the proposed law, others feel that the new law will fail to make an impact unless efforts are made to implement it rigorously. The existing law specifies punishment of two to seven years in jail and fines of anywhere between Rs 5,000 and Rs 25,000. The new law, on the other hand, proposes jail terms of five to seven years and fines from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 75 lakh. Experts say that while the increased quantum of punishment is to be lauded, what matters more is how effective the law is in bringing about convictions. “It is not the severity of the punishment that acts as a deterrent, but rather the certainty of punishment,” says Ritwick Dutta, a Delhi-based environment lawyer. “The fact is that very few people have been slapped with even the minimum sentence under the existing law and not a single person has ever been convicted and sent to jail for seven years.” Adds Samir Sinha, head of TRAFFIC-India, an organisation that monitors wildlife trade, “WPA hasn’t been an effective law. The government should concentrate more on enforcement on the ground level and fight cases against the accused to their logical end.” Subsection (e) of Section 51 of the draft bill, which deals with offences relating to tiger reserves, states, “Where such offence relates to the core area of a tiger reserve or where the offence relates to hunting in a tiger reserve or altering the boundaries of a tiger reserve, such offence shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than seven years and also with a fine which shall not be less than fifty lakh rupees.” Dutta feels that this provision is bound to fail. “Judges normally ask for strong proof against the accused if the prosecution is in favour of severe punishment and fine as per the law. How can you expect that from our poorly trained forest officials who, more often than not, fail to get the accused convicted,” asks Dutta. Activists also fear that the proposed classification of penalties into different categories, that is, critical species, national parks and sanctuaries and tiger reserves, will only complicate matters. Another provision of the bill that has come in for criticism is the establishment of “management” and “scientific” authorities to monitor trade and research. “These authorities will be manned by bureaucrats with little knowledge and there will be no role for independent scientists and experts. Local communities will also have no role to play. And these central authorities will also undermine the states’ rights to the forests,” says Archana Prasad, environmentalist and a former member of the Tiger Task Force. Of course, the draft bill has also been praised for some of its provisions. For example, an addition to sub-section (4), Section 50, of the existing act empowers the judge or magistrate “to detain the accused in the custody of the forest department for a period of up to seven days, subject to such conditions as he may see fit, to facilitate investigation into the offence,” if there is a prima facie case against the accused. “This will give time to officials to investigate and prepare their cases better,” says Sinha of TRAFFIC-India. In addition, the bill specifies punishment to the owner or occupier of the premises used to commit an offence. Forest officials could also be punished for violations under the proposed law. Again, most experts welcome the fact that the bill bans the leg-hold traps that are used to trap tigers and leopards. But Dutta says that here too the government could have done a little more. “The neck-traps used to snare deer and other animals are equally dangerous, but the government is silent on them,” he says. The draft amendment also talks about the promotion of “independent scientific research”. According to the proposed law, chief wildlife wardens will be empowered to grant permits to “any person, to conduct wildlife research on any animal specified in Schedules I to IV” of the existing law. “This is a great move. Independent researchers were made to run from pillar to post to get approval for their research projects all these years,” says M. Firoz Ahmed, wildlife biologist, Aaranyak, a scientific and industrial research organisation, Guwahati. Aaranyak works on biodiversity conservation in the northeast. Indeed, most wildlife activists are enthused by the government’s efforts to plug the loopholes in the existing law and make it more wildlife friendly. However, nearly everyone cautions that no matter how many amendments are made to the WPA, the law will remain a “paper tiger” unless efforts are made to enforce the law strictly. “The government’s intentions are very good. And strengthening rules is not bad at all. But I wish the government had laid more emphasis on equipping the forest officials with the right weapons and skills to get the guilty punished,” says M.K. Ranjitsinh, chairman of the Wildlife Trust of India, who drafted the WPA way back in 1972. Hopefully, the amended law will work at that.

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