Tiger reserves in red zone roar for help

Three reserve forests in the Red Corridor – Palamu, Indravati and Udanti-Sitanadi – have performed poorly in park management whereas two other jungles in the Maoist zone – Simlipal and Nagarjunsagar-Srisailam – are a tad better. While management in Simlipal in Orissa is “satisfactory”, in the bordering Andhra forest the situation improved after rebels were hounded out by the security agencies. “The five tiger reserves in the states affected by left-wing extremism require adequate and timely release of funds and special staff welfare schemes like insurance cover,” said V B Mathur, dean of the WII and lead author of an official report on ground-realities in various tiger reserves.

As per the 2010 tiger estimate, India has 1706 tigers   which is about 20 per cent more than the 2006 count of 1411, which incidentally did not include the Sunderbans, Jharkhand and Indravati in Chhattishgarh.

While officials and scientists are yet to enter Indravati for prey-base estimation study and setting up the camara traps, Mathur said he managed to get some preliminary data from the Red Corridor parks to categorise them.

Each of 39 tiger reserves are heavily short of front line staffs like guards. “The shortage could be as high as 30 per cent. The existing staffs have no system of shift-duty, mess and ration and yet they have the arduous task of patrolling deep and remote jungles,” he said.

The report along with another study on the status of tigers, co-predators and prey-base, released here, made it amply clear that while some of forests like Corbett in Uttrakhand and Nagarhole-Madhumalai-Wayanad in Western Ghats are doing well, a lot of work is still left to improve other tiger bearing forests. The most worrisome concern is reduction of forests in the periphery, said Y V Jhala, a WII scientist.

Lack of resources for parks too is a matter of concerns because currently revenue generated from ticket sales goes to the state coffer leaving nothing in the hands of park management to improve the infrastructure or help local communities.