If there is no forest then the tiger gets killed, if there is no tiger then the forest gets destroyed. Hence the tiger protects the forest and the forest guardsthe tiger
– The Mahabharata
he aforesaid quote from the epic mythology Mahabharata was stated by the honourable High Court of Bombay at Goa quoted right in its July 24 judgment, which was quoted from a report by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) on the status of tigers in 2022.
The High Court on July 24 directed the State government to notify the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary and other areas referred to in National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA)’s communications as a Tiger Reserve under Section 38-V (1) of the Wildlife Protection Act (WLPA) within three months from the date of the order.
The Court has directed the NTCA to render full assistance to the State Government for completing the process and after that to expeditiously process the State Government’s Tiger Conservation Plan and take a decision thereon within three months of receiving the tiger conservation plan from the State government.
The Court’s directives came less than a fortnight after Chief Minister Pramod Sawant’s statement that the State does not fit into the criteria for setting up a Tiger Reserve.
While disposing of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) writ petition, the Court also directed the State government to set up anti-poaching camps at strategic locations to be staffed by forest guards, watchers, etc, in the Wildlife Sanctuaries and National Parks in the State within next six months.
The Court further directed the State government to determine and settle the rights and claims of the Scheduled Tribes and other forest dwellers following the law as expeditiously as possible within a year from the date of order.
The Court gave these directives following an affidavit filed by Santosh Kumar, Chief Wildlife Warden, on behalf of the State government, wherein no contention was raised that the State government is barred or disabled from notifying Mhadei WLS and other areas as a Tiger Reserve because the State government is yet to settle the rights and claims of the forest dwellers in the protected area of Goa.
The only contention in the affidavit was that final notification under Section 26-A of the WLPA was yet to be issued in the cases of Bhagwan Mahaveer, Mhadei WLS (partly) and Netravali WLS (partly). Therefore, it was urged that proposing these areas as Tiger Reserves without settlement of rights and claims of the forest dwellers “may be premature, and will adversely affect larger public interest and further aggravate man-tiger conflict”.
The Court further stated that after analysis of the scheme of WLPA, it was clear that there was no bar or a legal impediment to notify a protected area as a Tiger Reserve even though final notification under Section26-A of WLPA may not have been issued concerning protected areas like the sanctuary or national park. Thus, issuing final notification under Section 26-A of WLPA is not a sine qua non for declaring the protected area a tiger reserve, it said.
The environmentalists, the civil society groups and the Goans at large are elated with this judgment as they are seeing it as a moment of great victory, which has been bestowed upon them by the HC, due to the relentless efforts of the petitioners and all the well-wishers of the environment and wildlife of Goa.
This landmark judgment not only pertains to the protection of tigers’ wildlife environment or river Mhadei, but it also sends a very clear message and signal all over the country that wherever the so-called “development forces” are at odds with the real environment forces, at the end of the day our ecosystems need to be preserved because the law enables it to do.
It just needs a proper political will and good governance to ensure that our purest of resources are ultimately saved. So, what does this judgment tell us?
“The judgment says many things, among which is that people and wildlife cannot be opposed to each other, that for people to survive the wildlife has to survive also, because as the court said ‘if there is no tiger there is no forest if there is no forest’. How do we live if we do not have the green around us, what do we survive on? The water resources will disappear, everything will go,” environment activist Norma Alvares, said.
“So basically, the message that the court was giving very strongly is that human beings are dependent on nature. It may not be the other way around. Nature may not be dependent on us for survival, but we definitely need nature around us in order to survive,” Alvares said.
“If we think that we can keep encroaching on our natural resources in our forests on our coastal areas, in all the areas which we have to protect and save, then we are spelling our own doom and we have nobody else responsible for that collapse of society, which could happen one day because of our mistakes and errors. I think this is the primary message,” she said.
She added by saying apart that, the court is sending out the message that “look you are part of the nature”.
“I don’t know if it’s in the judgment, but I remember the judge saying that we make laws which favour us, but in the real world everybody is equal. The laws of nature don’t make anything special for humans. We have got to survive,” Alvares said.
The government has been consistently opposing the proposal for Tiger Reserve and even informed the court. So, why did Goa Foundation file the PIL?
“In January 2020, four tigers were killed ostensibly poisoned by villagers due to cattle loss and this made headlines. Now, we were as taken aback by the Goa Foundation as the citizens of Goa that four tigers were killed overnight and the villagers were held responsible for these deaths,” Alvares said.
“The fact remains that there must have been something which upset the villagers so much that they poisoned the tigers, if at all they did it. We have lived in the village. I have lived in Sattari for five years and we know that people are very much attuned to nature,” she said.
“They don’t hate tigers. They don’t hate wild animals. They live with them and are aware of the animals in their surroundings. What would lead to people killing a majestic creature like a tiger, when they weren’t going to eat its meat? Since they didn’t kill the tigers for food, then obviously it was due to loss of cattle, which economically crippled them,” she said.
“The fact that they told the NTCA team, which visited that area to do a report on it that in previous times when cattle had been killed, they never got compensation and that is one of the remarks that NTCA makes in its report. The procedure for getting compensation is so long and tedious and you have to trudge from office to office. You just bemoan the death of your cattle by the tiger and in that moment, in that anger, you poison whatever destroys your source of living,” the environmental activist said.
“So, I don’t have any enmity or I do not condemn the villagers at all for what they did. I blame the government for not compensating people and going to their rescue when they need help. Because of the death of the four tigers, we said we must find out something about this issue,” Alvares said.
We started filing RTI applications and to our surprise and shock, we discovered that way back in 2011, the then Union Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh had written to the then Chief Minister, Digambar Kamat, saying ‘please set up a Tiger Reserve for Goa’,” the founding member of Goa Foundation said.
“We had done a survey in 2008 and we found the presence of tigers in Goa, but nothing came of it. Then in 2014, there was an all India survey done, where they found that there were five tigers in Goa. That is what prompted the NTCA to send a recommendation to the Goa Government saying that it is in the fitness of things that Goa declares an area as a Tiger Reserve,” the environment activist said.
“We did more research and found that indeed the Goa government had responded promptly in the sense that immediately within two months, the Chief Conservator of Forest wrote to the Deputy Conservator of Forest saying, we have received this letter from NTCA, please look into the issue and prepare the Tiger Reserve boundaries, what should we include,” she said.
“They came back again and again to the Government. The Forest Department actually marked the area for Tiger Reserve by 2018, they prepared a note in 2016, which was sent to the State Wildlife Board.
They didn’t say yes, but they didn’t say no,” she said.
“What they said was ‘please send us the proposal of the Tiger Reserve for approval before it is sent to NTCA’. It thereby meant ‘yes we are in favour of this’. In 2018, the Forest Department prepared the final plan and the note. It was then sent to the Board,” the legal expert said.
”When the then chairperson of the Board asked for a study on the impact of Tiger Reserve on the fringe people residing there, that was the last of it. The entire process simply came to a grinding halt and never came up again. This is what led us to file the petition,” the senior advocate said.
“As a result of the government’s carelessness, in 2020 four tigers died. Therefore, we filed the petition in that same year within three months. I think by April 2020, we filed the petition,” Alvares said.
“Regarding Government opposition, in Para 19 of the judgment, there are very nice four or five lines. The World Wildlife Fund, India describes the tiger as a unique animal, which plays a pivotal role in the health and diversity of the ecosystem. It is a top predator, at the apex of the food chain. Therefore, the presence of tigers in the forest is an indicator of the well-being of the ecosystem,” she added.
Now, the issue is, how significant is this judgment and what do you make of the efforts to scuttle the judgment and go to the Supreme Court?
Calling it a historic judgment, environmentalist Rajan Kerkar lauded Alvares’ efforts for the Tiger Reserve in Goa.
“I remember when I was part of the 2011 Dr Madhav Gadgil-led Western Ghats Ecology Experts Committee, during that time Dr Claude Alvarez requested me to present the tiger proposal, which was presented before Dr Gadgil. He asked me several questions and then I replied that I had known the tiger from my childhood,” Kerkar said.
“I remember, while preparing for SSA, I used to go to sleep late at night. I used to hear the tiger calls during the wee hours. Every night at 2.30 am, I could hear the tiger roaring in the jungle. So the tiger was just like a friend for me and when I saw that the herbivorous animals like the Sambars were killed in my village, I realised that this was a very serious situation,” Kerkar said.
“Then we presented the proposal to the then Governor of Goa, Lieutenant General Jacob. He shouted at me asking who told me that the tigers were there in Goa. According to him, they were coming from Karnataka. Then I told him, tigers were there in Goa and I had concrete evidence. Then he told the then Forest Secretary to collect the evidence within one week,” he reminisced.
“So immediately, I gave him concrete evidence regarding the presence of the tiger by presenting a tiger nail to him, although it was a crime,” the environmentalist said.
“But you know, people once upon a time worshipped a tiger as a God and if you kill the tiger there was a feeling that the whole family will face the wrath of the Tiger God. So, no one killed the tiger in that area. The then Conservator of Forest, Richard D’Souza also supported what I told through the evidence which his team had collected,” the environmentalist said.
“Then on June 31, 1999 the wildlife sanctuary became a reality. So, after that, every politician, every MLA from my area struggled to denotify the area. I realised that if this materialises, then the tiger, our wildlife will be threatened and I always consider the tiger as a unique and majestic animal. If you protect the tiger, then only the Mhadei will flow continuously,” he said.
“What is very surprising and also funny is that this constant narrative that the powers that be were trying to espouse in the court and outside that there is nothing called as Tiger God, is aimed at negating the presence of tigers in Goa, when the fact is just exactly the opposite,” Kerkar said.
“What is also interesting is even in the court, there were documents presented by Adv Norma Alvares on the minutes of meetings which led to the formation of the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary and in it, the presence of tigers was very much mentioned,” Kerkar said.
In para 20, 21 of the Judgment, it says the research and scientific reports produced by several government and non-government agencies established the presence of the tiger in the protected areas of Goa.
The NTCA maps indicate tiger presence not only within the boundaries of Goa, but also in the contiguous regions of the neighbouring States of Karnataka and Maharashtra.
The question is that, the very fact that tigers are in Goa, but the point everybody seems to be missing is that we are not only talking of Mhadei, we are talking of a contiguous forest corridor and which is
why it’s called the Cotigao-Mhadei Forest Complex.
Speaking on this and his experience as a senior forester on the whole issue of the presence of tiger in these areas, Milind Karkhanis, former Deputy Conservator of Forest said that he has worked in almost all parts every wildlife sanctuary, right from Mhadei to Cotigao and even beyond.
“All these areas have tigers, this is for sure. I did not see the tigers with my own eyes, but I had seen a lot of evidence, which could not be ignored. So the presence of tigers in Goa can’t be denied,” he said.
The State Wildlife Board all along has been completely supportive of the demand for Tiger Reserve. It is only now that there has been a complete turnaround. Why is the State opposing the Tiger Reserve now?
“To be very frank, the State never opposed the Tiger Reserve in its affidavits and presentations. At one time Iread in the newspapers that the chief minister said the government informed the court that it did not favour a Tiger Reserve. Actually, it never stated this in any of the three affidavits,” Alvares said.
“What is mentioned was that the petition is premature and they hadn’t responded. Also, the Government said that NTCA recommendation was not mandatory on it and it was not bound to follow the same directly. Thirdly it said that notifying a Tiger Reserve wasn’t possible until it settles rights of the forest dwellers,” she said.
“Fourthly, the government said it hadn’t settled the rights of these people. To that, the court asked them how long it would take to do so. To that, the government had no answer. Fifthly they very strangely said that why should we protect only the tiger? All wild animals have to get equal protection, therefore there is no need to protect the tiger only,” the senior advocate said.
“The court asked the Advocate General twice whether the government was opposed to a Tiger Reserve and he said no. So, these were the objections that they put up before the court, each of which could be answered legally, not emotionally,” she said.
“Legally because I was able to show that the Chapter 4 of the Wildlife Protection Act, which was introduced in 2006 and deals with setting up of the NTCA and the tiger framework for India, states that you do not have to wait for settlement of rights for notifying a Tiger Reserve. It can be done while the Tiger Reserve has been notified after the Tiger has been notified because you get the advantage of a huge amount of money that the central government can give you to settle people’s rights and so on,” the environmental activist added.
When asked about the possible hidden motive behind objecting to Tiger Reserve, Kerkar said that in 1999 when the sanctuary was notified, during that period there were mining leases operational.
“If you look at the notification, it was the duty of the government to stop all this mining operation. But in spite of this, the government did not take any note of it. No action was taken. So, we approached the Centre’s Empowered Committee through the Goa Foundation. I wrote everything. I provided the photos of all these areas. The Member Secretary issued a letter to the Goa government on November 7, 2003 that forget about mining, one was not allowed to remove a blade of grass from the area,” he said.
“After that, the State government had to close down all these mines. Now the politician in my area is dreaming that he will restart the mining and the effort was made to do so, in spite of the notification. In 2011, an attempt was made to restart mining in Brahmakarmali, which is an area known for its horticulture. I was invited for the programme where suddenly I was told to explain the ill effects of mining activities, which I did,” Kerkar said.
“I said that the public hearing organised by the Mines and Geology department is totally illegal and already I have written to them that this whole area having mining lease lies in the core area of the wildlife sanctuary. So you cannot start it. Now, if you go to Sattari taluka, you will find that memorandum stating that mining is the backbone of the locals, has been circulated to the politician’s supporters and they have been told to collect the signatures of villagers in support of it,” the environmentalist said.
Karkhanis said that the process of settlement of rights as per the Indian Forest Act 1927 and the Wildlife Protection act 1972 should have been completed by now. “Nobody is taking any call on that, but I have myself requested the concerned authorities to expedite the process,” he said.
Regarding the issue of displacement of forest tribes, Norma Alvares said that a bogey is being raised that a lot of people will have to go out and their rehabilitation would be an issue.
“The fact of the matter is that when the Tiger Reserve was being notified, in fact even when the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary was being notified, the government kept all the settlements out as much as they could. When the Tiger Reserve was demarcated, a specific note was sent to the Chief Minister by the State Wildlife Board, in which it was stated that all the habitable villages had been kept out. There were a few areas in which a few houses lay within the Tiger Reserve area,” she said.
“If they are in the Core area, they can be resettled in the buffer zone right and if they are in the buffer zone they can remain there because the buffer zone has to keep people there, because the Project Tiger also promotes Wildlife Tourism. You need people in that area so none of the people have to go out of that area,” she said.