AERIAL VIEW
If being non-Goans, the migrants can get all the benefits; why not the tigers, which are very essential for our environment and becoming extinct?
Or does it mean that Tiger habitat could have been declared only if they had voting rights so that they could be exploited during elections, Mr Rane?
Tiger Reserves are declared by National Tiger Conservation Authority via Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Act, 2006, under a centrally sponsored scheme called Project Tiger.
To declare an area as Tiger Reserve, the state governments can forward their proposals in this regard to NTCA. Central Government via NTCA may also advise the state governments to forward a proposal for the creation of Tiger Reserves.
On Good Friday day, Goa got shocking news from the Forest Minister Vishwajit Rane that Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary will not be declared a Tiger Reserve as the wild cats spotted in the region are non-resident Goans.
Well, Mr Rane, if the tigers coming to Goa are non-resident Goans and what is your vote bank from a particular community in Valpoi? Are they Goans? Yet they get the ration cards, voting rights, government land, and government jobs on a platter. Not just that, Rane would have supplied them with food and water every day so that they do not have to search for food, isn’t it?
If being non-Goans, the migrants can get all the benefits; why not the tigers, which are very essential for our environment and becoming extinct?
Or does it mean that Tiger habitat could have been declared only if they had voting rights so that they could be exploited during elections, Mr Rane?
Tiger Reserves are declared by National Tiger Conservation Authority via Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Act, 2006, under a centrally sponsored scheme called Project Tiger.
To declare an area as Tiger Reserve, the state governments can forward their proposals in this regard to NTCA. Central Government via NTCA may also advise the state governments to forward a proposal for the creation of Tiger Reserves.
Tiger Reserves are managed by National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA). No alternation of the boundary can be done without the recommendation of the National Board for Wild Life and without the advice of the Tiger Conservation Authority.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) had mooted the proposal for the tiger reserve in Goa after the All India Tiger Estimation, 2014.
As the protected areas of Goa form a contiguous corridor with the Kali Tiger Reserve in Karnataka, a proposal to set up a tiger reserve in Goa was discussed at a meeting of the State Board for Wildlife in 2016.
The proposal recommended the conversion of Goa’s four wildlife sanctuaries – Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary, Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary and National
Park, Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary, Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary- into one contiguous tiger reserve.
A six-day field exercise of the All India Tiger Estimation in May 2018 confirmed the presence of big cats in the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary.
However, for many years now, Vishwajit Rane has been opposing the proposal of Tiger reserve as his own family has vast tracts of land in the sanctuary.
Now, as the Minister for Forest and the Town and Country Planning, Vishwajit Rane, along with his wife Deviya Rane, the chairman of Forest Development Corporation, seems to have got the licence to kill.
Another important point to be noted here is that in early 2020, in what is believed to be a case of poisoning, four tigers, including two cubs, were found dead in the Mahadei Wildlife Sanctuary of Goa, triggering outrage among wildlife activists across the region.
The Goa government had now ordered a detailed inquiry into the issue, as so also the MoEFCC, but the inquiry seems to be heading nowhere in the last two years.
