OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT |
Lucknow, June 13:
The
Pilibhit wildlife sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh today officially became a
tiger reserve, the state’s third, in a change that officials said would
earn it central grants and minimise man-animal conflict.
State principal
secretary (forest and wildlife) Pratibha Singh said the government had
notified the sanctuary, which has 30 of the state’s 118 big cats
according to 2011 central data, as a tiger reserve.
Central approval
for the tag came early this month, with sources saying Pilibhit BJP MP
and Union minister Maneka Gandhi helped speed up the clearance.“This is going to
be the 45th tiger reserve in the country and the third in the state,”
Singh said in a release. The other two are Dudhwa in Lakhimpur Kheri
district and Amangarh in Bijnore.
The new status
will bring much-needed funds for the Pilibhit reserve from the
centre-run National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), state officials
said. India, with 1,706
tigers, has around 68 per cent of the world’s estimated 2,500 big cats,
Singh said citing figures from the NTCA.
The largest such
reserve in the country is the Jim Corbett Park in Uttarakhand, with over
200 tigers, while the Sunderbans in Bengal had 103 big cats in 2013,
officials said. The Pilibhit reserve, 225km from Lucknow, is spread over 1000sqkm with parts of it along the Nepal border. “The forests are
rich and diverse. The jungles are home to a variety of animals including
the tiger,” state chief wildlife warden Rupak De said.
Another official
expressed hope that the new status would help the Pilibhit reserve
increase its forest cover, improve anti-poaching measures and take steps
to ensure the big cats had more prey to feed on. “Although the
tigers have a large prey base, there has been too much interference by
people who live on the edges. Such matters should improve now,” the
official said.
Such man-animal
conflicts occur both ways. At least six persons were killed in 2012 by
tigers when they entered the park in search of firewood and forest
produce. At other times, the big cats enter hamlets on the fringes in
search of food and pounce on villagers. The last fatal tiger attack was
on February 19 this year.
The Akhilesh Yadav
government is learnt to have consulted Union minister Maneka — a
wildlife enthusiast and an ex- environment minister — on the Pilibhit
reserve and she promised all help for the park in her constituency.
It took the state
four years to win central approval. The process began during previous
chief minister Mayawati’s tenure in 2010. Sources said the in-principle
approval from came in 2008. But in 2010, a follow-up proposal from the
state was returned by the Centre, with sources saying the plan lacked
key details like clear demarcations of “core and buffer areas” in the
proposed reserve.
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Saturday, June 14, 2014
Reserve tag on UP tiger park
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