The declaration of an area of 180.72 sq. km. as the Kolamarka Conservation Reserve, by a state government-issued gazette notification, makes it the state's second conservation reserve, the first being the Borgad Great Indian Bustard Conservation Reserve, in Rashegaon (Nashik). Kolamarka is a reserve forest in Kamlapur range under Sironcha division, where around 18 genetically acceptable pure wild buffaloes, the ancestors of the Indian domestic buffalo, have been reported.
The notification comes some eight years after the initial PIL reporting the decline of wild buffalo populations in the region was filed with the Supreme Court of India, back in 2005. Following the PIL, a meeting was convened by the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) in 2007 to take steps to save buffaloes, and after the 24th meeting of the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) in 2011, debate that Kolamarka should be declared a wildlife sanctuary was ended with its recent notification as a conservation reserve. As per the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, conservation or community reserves are jointly managed by local communities and the Forest Department of the region.
Kishor Rithe, president of Satpuda Foundation and member of the NBWL, who was instrumental in the notification, told Pinjarkar, “It seems everything is in favour of endangered wild buffaloes now."Although Rithe was in favour of the region being declared a wildlife sanctuary, stating that atleast 100 sq. km. of the notified area must gain the legal protection of a wildlife sanctuary, the State Government cited the Naxal problem as the reason for their hesitation to do the same.
Source: Sanctuary Asia.
