Panaji, Nov 25 (PTI) The Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee has recommended including protected areas contiguous with the core of the Kali Tiger Reserve and with relatively few households in the first phase of the proposed Goa Tiger Reserve.
The committee has also recommended to the apex court that the protected areas with significantly higher numbers of households, such as the southern part of Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary and Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary, shall not be included in the first phase of the reserve.
The CEC submitted its report before the Supreme Court on November 21, after the panel’s two members — Chandra Prakash Goyal and Sunil Limaye — met all the stakeholders, including NGO Goa Foundation.
The NGO had filed a PIL in the high court, mandating that the state government declare the area a tiger reserve.
The HC had ordered the Goa government to declare part of its wildlife sanctuaries as a tiger reserve. The Goa government subsequently challenged the order before the Supreme Court.
The CEC, in its report, said the state’s protected areas that are directly contiguous with the core of the Kali Tiger Reserve (Karnataka) and have relatively few households, namely Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary (50 households) and Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary (41 households), should be considered for inclusion in the first phase of the proposed Goa Tiger Reserve.
“Their ecological adjacency to the Kali core makes them vital for ensuring landscape-level connectivity and enabling natural dispersal of tigers into Goa, and hence these two shall form part of the core of the proposed Goa Tiger Reserve,” mentioned the report, a copy of which is with PTI.
The protected areas contiguous with the buffer of the Kali Tiger Reserve and having minimal human habitation, namely, the northern part of Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary (9 households) and Bhagwan Mahavir National Park (2 households), constitute the most feasible and socially least disruptive components for notification as the buffer of the proposed reserve in the first phase, it said.
The total area proposed for notification as the Goa Tiger Reserve is 468.60 sq km, the committee noted.
“This area is fully contiguous with the 1,345 sq km core and buffer of the Kali Tiger Reserve, and together they form an integrated protected landscape of approximately 1,814 sq km,” the report said.
This contiguity is expected to significantly strengthen landscape-level connectivity and ecological functionality, the CEC said.
The integration of the proposed Goa Tiger Reserve with this large and established conservation complex will facilitate unhindered tiger movement, ensure genetic and demographic continuity, and support natural dispersal from the source population in Kali, it said.
“Collectively, the combined core and buffer systems of both reserves will constitute a unified transboundary conservation unit capable of sustaining long-term tiger population recovery and enhancing the overall resilience of the Western Ghats tiger metapopulation,” the report said.
The protected areas with significantly higher numbers of households, such as the southern part of Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary (approximately 560 households) and Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary (approximately 612 households), shall not be included in the first phase of the Goa Tiger Reserve, it said.
“These areas would require extensive community consultations, sustained awareness-building, and confidence-generation measures before any decision regarding their inclusion can be taken,” the report said.
Their incorporation, if found appropriate, may be examined in a second phase, after securing local support and adequately addressing livelihood and rehabilitation concerns, it said.
The report said that in view of the public apprehension regarding displacement and land acquisition, the state government shall undertake structured and sustained awareness programmes to clearly communicate that the declaration of a Tiger Reserve does not entail compulsory relocation of villages from buffer areas nor the automatic acquisition of private land.
Setting up a deadline for the state, the CEC said the government shall initiate the process of notification of the proposed Goa Tiger Reserve, as indicated above, within the next three months.
“The state government shall prepare a Tiger Conservation Plan, as mandated under Section 38V of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, in consultation with NTCA, immediately after the declaration of the Goa Tiger Reserve,” the report added. PTI RPS GK
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.