Field Disorder

The SC deadline for notifying buffer areas around each tiger reserve is being cheered by the greens. But court orders alone cannot alter the grim ground reality. A primer

Tehelka, 14 April, 2012

HOWOn 3 April, the Supreme Court directed state governments to demarcate and notify buffer zones around critical tiger habitats (CTH) in each tiger reserve within three months. Bhopal-based RTI activist Ajay Dubey had moved the court, seeking implementation of a 2008 directive of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) that ordered shifting of tourism activities from CTH to buffer areas. When the NTCA informed the apex court that 10 states were yet to notify buffers, the Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Dipak Misra set a threemonth deadline and asked the NTCA to submit final guidelines for tourism by 10 July.

WHATSection 38 V of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, defines buffer as peripheral to critical tiger habitat or core area, “where a lesser degree of habitat protection is required to ensure the integrity of the CTH with adequate dispersal for tiger species, and which aims at promoting co-existence between wildlife and human activity with due recognition of the livelihood, developmental, social and cultural rights of the local people. The limits of such areas are determined on the basis of scientific and objective criteria in consultation with the gram sabha concerned and an expert committee constituted for the purpose”.

In the present context, notification of buffer areas will pave the way for the tiger reserves to phase out tourism from CTHs to outer forests. On a broader plane, this is supposed to restrict mining, industry, commercial construction, etc. around tiger reserves.

In short, CTHs will have a protective ring where land use will strike a balance between conservation and development imperatives.

WHY NOTThere is fear, real and imaginary, among people residing around tiger reserves that notification of buffer areas will compromise their livelihood. Unlike core forests, buffers allow human habitation. Yet, there have been attempts in the past to relocate villages from buffer areas. Even the latest NTCA evaluation of tiger reserves proposes relocation of villages from buffer areas of some tiger reserves such as Pench (Maharashtra). The limiting factor, though, is that green laws do not allow industries or mines in buffer areas, reducing opportunities for local employment.

Business and political interests are also opposed to the idea of buffer forests. Often, even Forest Departments play ball. For example, in a December 2010 note on the decision of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan not to notify buffer areas around Panna tiger reserve, then state forest chief HS Pabla assured the government that his department had taken all care to ensure that such a notification would not hurt the (diamond) mining interests in and around the reserve. More than a year later, Panna is yet to notify its buffer.

BUTIndia has 39 tiger reserves (40 including Karnataka’s BR Hills where a different, people-oriented management approach is being tried out) spread over approximately 32,578 sq km of CTH notified by 16 tiger states. Bihar’s Valmiki Tiger Reserve is the only one that does not have a notified CTH. Till April 2011, 22 tiger reserves had notified their buffer areas that added up to 18,000 sq km. In most reserves, the expanse of the buffer exceeds the CTH. In Manas, for example, the buffer is almost three times the core.

While these add up to a sizeable green zone on paper, such demarcation often has no ground implication. Most of our reserves are islands surrounded by highways, rail tracks and settlements. Take Ranthambhore, for example. Every possible patch of forests of this tiger reserve has been notified as the CTH. When Ranthambhore notifies its buffer, it will have to mark out agricultural fields, villages and perhaps even a part of Sawai Madhopur town. Depending on its expanse, the Ranthambhore buffer will have 1-2 lakh people residing in it. Any curb on developmental activities or the livelihood of such a huge population will invariably create a major law and order problem.

THEREFOREUnderstandably, few legal provisions are exercised under such circumstances. Most buffer areas exist on paper while it is business as usual on the ground. Moreover, such expansive buffer areas spread the administrative resources thin at a time when even many CTHs are barely secure.

Consider the high-profile tiger reserves. Mining is a major threat in the CTHs of both Sariska and Ranthambhore. Within Corbett’s CTH, the land mafia rules at Loha Chaur inside the reserve’s Durga Devi gate and the timber mafia manipulates the traditional rights (Hak Hakook) of local villagers, particularly in the Sonanadi forests. Corbett’s Kosi river is being mined away openly for construction material that is used locally by mushrooming tourist resorts.

If CTHs are not secure, buffers stand little chance. Tadoba in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district, for example, notified its buffer in May 2010. Its lush peripheral forests are still under consideration for coal mining and a few mines are operating in adjacent areas. Iron and bauxite ore mining in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district threatens the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve and its connectivity to Dandeli-Anshi. In Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara district, lobbying for coal mining undermines the future of Pench and Satpura. Even Kaziranga Tiger Reserve, the celebrated home of the one-horned rhino, has not been able to stop mining in its peripheral forests. The list is just too long.

Back in December 2006, the apex court had issued directions to all states on the notification of the Ecologically Sensitive Zones (ESZ), a 10-km ring of restricted land use around all national parks and sanctuaries. The Centre and the states have been debating and dithering on the provisions of ESZ ever since. Five years on, yet another court order may get defeated on the field if the legal framework of environmental protection continues to be twisted at political and administrative will.