The forest officials of Panna Tiger Reserve worked in close nexus with poachers for over a decade, says an internal report prepared by the Intelligence Cell of the tiger reserve, which had lost all its tigers by 2008.
Spread over 543 sq km in Panna and Chhatarpur districts of Madhya Pradesh, the tiger reserve had some 23 big cats when it was conferred the status under Project Tiger in 1994. The tiger census in 2005 estimated its population in the reserve to be around 25. But over the next few years tiger experts sounded the alarm that tiger sightings in the reserve were few and far between. In 2009, after a high-level inquiry by the National Tiger Conservation Authority, officials admitted that the reserve had lost all its tigers.
The staff, from forest guards to sub-divisional officers, suppressed the cases of tiger deaths and tried to destroy evidences of poaching, says the confidential report on poaching. It was prepared after investigating cases of poaching in the reserve from 1989 to early 2011 and the forest department's role in it. Though submitted to Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (wildlife) H S Pabla in February this year, a section of the report came to light recently through a Right To Information (RTI) application filed by Ajay Dubey, a conservation activist of non-profit Prayatna Environmental Action Group in Bhopal. Dubey shared the details of the RTI reply exclusively with Down To Earth.
The report urges the government to form a high-powered team to investigate the nexus between poachers and forest officials. But it seems the contents did not go down well with the forest top brass who have ordered verification, saying the report does not hold water.
“All the top bureaucrats who looked after the forest department when the Panna debacle happened hold top positions in the government now," says Dubey. “They are deliberately delaying the inquiry so that the evidences can be destroyed and witnesses manipulated." Read the full report here.
Source: Kumar Sambhav S., Down To Earth, Issue: October 31, 2011.
