It is a pity that the state, despite the massive financial assistance and expertise lent by the Centre and availability of its own enormous human and other resources could not retain the sobriquet. Ironically, despite the rise in tiger numbers in the country from 1411 in 2006 to 1706 in 2011 it is Madhya Pradesh which lost the largest number of them - the number came down from 300 to 257. The only other ‘tiger region' that lost tigers during the period was Andhra Pradesh - it lost 23 of them.
For its bull-headed and lackadaisical ways the forest department has been engulfed in controversies for some years now. The biggest of them all was relating to the Panna Tiger Reserve which lost all its tigers by the close of 2008. Despite the early warnings from several sources, including the nation's tiger conservation agencies, the department refused to pay any heed to them. Its Principal Chief Conservator (PCCF-Wildlife), HS Pabla, mulishly kept claiming that the Reserve had 20-odd tigers when everyone else reported that they were disappearing fast, mostly because of rampant poaching. Instead of taking steps to check the veracity of the statements, especially of the central tiger conservation agencies, the forest department, sticking to its guns and displaying an adversarial attitude, joined issue with them.
This is not all. After the tigers were all gone, when an inquiry conducted by the Central Special Investigation Team (SIT) came to the conclusion that they were mostly poached the state government set up its own enquiry committee, as is evident now, to put a lid on the whole thing and to protect its PCCF. The state level inquiry came to the conclusion that gender imbalance in the tiger population caused by declining number of females made the males go looking for them outside the Reserve only to be poached or just get killed. No mention was made of the reasons for occurrence of the gender imbalance. Likewise, no mention was made of the failure of the Reserve staff or visiting forest officers to notice the progressive gender imbalance over the years. Needless to say, no effort was made to fix responsibility for the total disappearance of the tigers from the Reserve.
However, the cat is now out of the bag. Ajay Dubey of “Prayatna", an environmental action group, has ferreted out information that the forest department recently handed over details of nearly two dozen cases of tiger deaths in Panna to the home department asking for CBI inquiry into them. After examination, the latter picked up three cases which, according to it, seemed worthy of independent investigations. Prayatna's efforts indicate that the forest department had received several reports of poaching of tigers, yet it failed to take the needed steps either at the field level or in the headquarters. This corroborates the contention of the SIT which after evaluation of all the relevant factors concluded that there were no ecological reasons for the tigers to become extinct in Panna. According to it, a steady decline in the numbers of females was noticeable since 2003, the maximum decline taking place between 2003 and 2005, and then continuing on until 2007-08. Poachers brought down more females as they have smaller home ranges and hence they became extinct before male tigers.
Seemingly, obsessed with tourism, the department kept dismissing every report appearing in the media as “media hype". The local MPs and MLAs had expressed concern and some cases were filed in the Apex Court too. During the same period letters were also written to Chief Secretary and Principal Secretary Forests by the Chairman and Member Secretary, respectively, of the Central Empowered Committee after its two visits to the Reserve. Developing a peculiar imperviousness, the department ignored them all. When it was virtually curtains for the tigers in Panna in June 2008, Pabla was still waxing eloquent about their presence therein in the prestigious Sanctuary Asia magazine. Even the forest minister's comments on what has come out in public domain now was ostrich-like - that his department was prevented from doing the needful by a dacoit gang that was camping in the Reserve. The SIT has categorically stated in its report that the outlaws were in the Reserve between 2006 and 2008, whereas poaching, a fact never given due credence to by the state, had been continuing since 2001. Read the full report here.
Source: by Proloy Bagchi, Ground report.com, Media & Tech.
