Tigers facing survival threat in Naxal areas

Endangered tigers have been facing a bigger threat in Naxal areas in the absence of wildlife protection activities there, a leading NGO has said."While they (extremists) may not be intentionally targeting tigers, they are preventing conservation activities in the regions they control, which may be as much as 30 per cent of the India's tiger range," Geneva-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said.The leading global environment network, representing around 160 countries, points out in a report that India is facing increasing insurgency problems, especially as disaffected tribes have turned against the government and have been supporting groups such as Naxalites.The book titled "Conservation for a New Era", published on behalf of IUCN and released recently, outlines critical issues facing the world in the 21st century.Drawing attention of the global community to save the endangered striped cats, it said Naxalites are a threat to the recovery of tigers in the Asian sub-continent as they "control vast areas of remote forest in central and eastern India -- areas that serve as prime tiger habitat".The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), too, in its latest tiger census report had said that regions with heavy Naxalite presence and influence were the country's worst, and reasons for the fall in the number of tigers in these reserves can be anything -- from poaching to loss of habitat."The presence of insurgence in almost one-third of the country's wildlife areas or tiger habitat are causing disturbance in breeding tiger. It is also leading to poaching.Officials are unable to protect animals and the best example would be Palamu in Jharkhand where due to the Naxal presence the numbers of tiger is falling at drastic rate," says Belinda Wright of Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI)."It also makes it impossible to monitor the tiger," she adds.A recently released book "Conservation for a New Era" by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) points out that extremists may not be intentionally targeting tigers but they are preventing conservation activities in the regions they control, which may be as much as 30 per cent of the India's tiger range."India is facing increasing insurgency problems, especially as disaffected tribes have turned against the government and have been supporting groups such as the Maoist guerrillas known as Naxalites," it says.Conservation of big cats remains a priority for the government which has doubled the budgetary allocation for the Tiger Project to Rs 184 crore in 2009-10 from Rs 72 crore in 2008-09."Government is doing its bit. But Naxals are present in seven out of 38 tiger reserves, which means no official tiger census has been conducted for a very long time," says P K Sen, a retired forest official who heads a tiger conservation programme in New Delhi.While adding that the elimination of the extremists is key for tiger conservation, he says, "For the last 9-10 years, not even a single forest official have visited these areas, thereby limiting forest management and development works for conservation."Though the government maintains that at least 52 tigers have died so far this year across the country, the NGOs estimate the toll to be 66 and have attributed the deaths to shrinking habitats, poaching and man-animal conflicts."In the last few months, Uttrakhand in the north and Karnataka in the south have recorded particularly high numbers of tiger deaths," says Wright.