Signature campaign launched by SATYA to save wildlife

UNI - Saturday, October 17 1998

DEHRA DUN: Save Tiger Youth Association (SATYA) has started a signature campaign to save the wildlife, especially tigers, in the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pradesh which is under threat due to a number of factors.

The SATYA, based in Pilibhit, requested the Prime Minister to take effective action to protect the reserve. A well-planned practical `action plan' for the reserve is required which cannot be left only to the park authorities, the association has urged. According to the recent issue of `tigerlink', a linkage of concerned people and organisations across the globe to save the tiger, the SATYA feels that the current state of wildlife and forest in Dudhwa is a result of 20-25 years of `mismanagement by the forest department and project tiger.'

`Tigerlink' further says that the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) has launched a project in the reserve to study existing tiger habitats around the 490 sq km Dudhwa National Park as well as the human-animal conflict issues around the park.

According to the appeal made to the Prime Minister by the SATYA, if stringent and urgent measures to protect the wildlife in Dudhwa were not taken, it would disappear over the next ten years.

Meanwhile, wildlife experts conducting studies around the Corbett Tiger Reserve have reported `heavy poaching' in the Kathkinau area, in the oak forests between Talla Kote and Champawat and in the Tanakpur forests and suggested creation of a `Corbett Tiger Reserve Protection Committee'.

According to Dr AJT Johnsingh of the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, and Mr AS Negi, conservator of forests, UP, predators (leopard and tiger) have already suffered a lot due to uncontrolled poaching that has been occurring for several decades.

``On our walk from Selargarh to Talla Kote, a distance of about 32 km, where Corbett shot a total of five man-eating tigers, we did not see a single tiger sign.''

Earlier this year, in April and May, several leopards, a sambhar and spotted deer were reported to have been killed and several other animals injured by vehicles on the newly-widened and metalled 20 km stretch of road running along the periphery of Corbett National Park.

The forest department has asked the PWD to lay a series of speedbreakers along the road, particularly at the main points where the animals across to reach the Kosi river on the other side from the park.

According to `Tigerlink', it is feared that not only will this road increase the volume and speed of traffic but it will also facilitate poaching during the periods when the park is closed to visitors.