Project Tiger fund not adequately utilised

The country’s tiger conservation programme is flush with government funds which are not adequately utilised to achieve the programme’s critical objectives but diverted towards more inane goals, including “habitat improvement”, a study by a group of international experts has found.

The study also reveals that though the Project Tiger, which was launched in 1972, initially helped establish a large number of reserves, more recently it has become less directly related to tigers and their protection and the management of forest reserves was so inadequate that it led to wiping out of the big cat’s population in Sariska and Panna. The findings of the study by a group of tiger biologists, including India’s Ullas Karanth, conservation scientists, policy experts, field practitioners from the US, Europe, South Asia and South East Asian countries, have revealed that while India stood at the top in expenditure on conservation, not much effort has been made on law enforcement, its monitoring, informant networks and staff improvement. Across the world only 3,500 animals live in the wild now occupying just seven percent of their historical range. Of these only 1000 are likely to be breeding females. The study identifies 42 source sites. The Malenad-Mysore tiger landscape in the State as per the study holds key in conservation as the study says that the region extending from Dandeli to Niligiris maintains about 220 adult tigers. The study says that the region has a source site like Nagarhole, which has shown the increase in number by 400 percent since past thirty years. http://www.deccanherald.com/content/97132/project-tiger-fund-not-adequately.html