ASSEMBLY POLL '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS '98
ARCHIVES

Centre to establish wildlife trade control bureau

Union Environment and Forests Minister Suresh Prabhu today said plans were afoot to establish a wildlife trade control bureau and more tiger reserves and expressed grave concern over poaching of endangered wildlife even in protected areas.

Inaugurating a three-day national workshop on ''25 years of Project Tiger'', Prabhu said the proposed bureau would operate under his ministry with linkages down to the district level to pre-empt lucrative wildlife trading at the grassroots level itself.

"Some recent cases have shown that the poaching problem is more serious and widespread than we anticipated," the minister said, adding that the traditional wildlife enforcement machinery was clearly unable to tackle the menace.

He also announced the creation of two more tiger reserves in Karnataka and Maharashtra, taking the total number of reserves to 25.

Later, in an informal chat with the media, he hinted that four more reserves would be created and that the areas were yet to be identified.

Apparently rattled by the poaching cases, the minister said the ministry would soon institute awards for field staff on the lines of the President's medal in the police department.

He said wildlife conservation programmes concentrated efforts on the creation and management of protected areas, neglecting wildlife population and habitats outside national parks, tiger reserves and sanctuaries where ''greater losses'' have occurred.

To overcome the problem, the Centre will soon introduce two categories of protected areas in the amended Wildlife Protection Act, he said. These will be known as ''conservation reserves ''and "community reserves". The government also plans to introduce a green guard scheme to safeguard wildlife outside reserves, Prabhu said.

The minister hinted at the creation of a fund for each tiger reserve, with direct allocations to it from both the central and state governments.

Urging state ministers to pledge 15 per cent of their budget to the environment sector, the minister said the Centre had already approached the Planning Commission for a substantial hike to the environment ministry, which currently gets less than one per cent of the total budget allocations.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report