This was decided at the 24th meeting of the standing committee of National Board for Wildlife (NBWL). MoEF minister Jayanthi Natarajan is going to strongly communicate to every state that at least 50% of their wildlife staff should be trained or specialize in the wildlife background in the next 3 years.
M K Ranjitsinh, chairman of Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) and NBWL member, pointed out that there was a serious dearth of trained and specialized officers in the wildlife department of the states.
Another NBWL member Kishor Rithe suggested that MoEF should prescribe a time frame for the states to train the requisite staff in wildlife management, failing which the funding support from the MoEF should be discontinued.
Ranjitsinh mentioned that then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had strongly recommended need for wildlife trained officers and had set up Wildlife Institute of India ( WII) in Dehradun for imparting training to officers. "However, the states are apathetic on the issue," he said. Read the full report here.
Source: Vijay Pinjarkar, Times of India, Nagpur.
