Wildlife should be Home Ministry’s domain: Maneka

NEW DELHI, July 10: The responsibility for enforcing wildlife laws must be taken away from the Ministry of Environment and Forest and handed over to the Home Ministry. This was the drastic recommendation of a group of India’s most-renowned conservationists.

Former Union environment minister Maneka Gandhi has in fact written to both Home Minister Indrajit Gupta and Environment Minister Saifuddin Soz stating that the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MEF) “is toothless in law”. She has suggested that the Home Ministry immediately set up an enforcement cell to deal with the continuing trade in tiger bones and other species.Says Valmik Thapar, a tiger specialist: “The conservation community is tired of suggesting ways and means to improve wildlife management in the country. We find that the ministry is just not capable of dealing with the desperate situation. We have therefore suggested a separate Protected Area Authority with a few superintendents of police to manage it.”

Wildlife protection has indeed suffered in the country given the constant reports of tiger deaths as well as the large scale seizures of wildlife skins and bones. There are just four deputy director generals posted in the regional centres who have to look after thousands of kilometres without staff and resources.In addition, there is the new threat of new development projects and industries coming up in protected areas. Ecologist and editor of Sanctuary magazine, Bittu Sahgal has documented over 60 such projects to date but the figure is expected to be much higher.

Things have reached such a pass that the Dr Ulhas Karanth of the Bangalore-based Centre for Wildlife Studies, has advised the earmarking of critical wildlife areas in the country as “no-development zones”.