PANAJI: The Bombay high court at Goa on Monday directed the state government to notify the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary and other areas as a tiger reserve under Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 within three months and pulled up the government for continuing “to steadfastly avoid notifying the tiger reserve”.
In its ruling on a petition seeking directions to the state government to notify the sanctuary as a tiger reserve, the high court said that “we cannot allow the tiger, which is a national animal, to fall into a death trap” and ruled that the National Tiger Conservation Authority’s repeated recommendations to set up a tiger reserve were not merely recommendations but also directives that would need to be mandatorily complied with.
In his first reaction, Goa’s forest minister Vishwajit Rane, a vocal opponent to declaring the sanctuary as a tiger reserve, said the state will explore options to file an appeal against the ruling before the Supreme Court.
During proceedings before the high court, the Goa government opposed the petition, claiming that it was “not opposed to notifying the area as a tiger reserve” but this was not the right time to make such a declaration. The government reasoned that further studies were necessary, and the rights of the forest dwellers also needed to be settled entirely before such steps could be taken.”
The state government also insisted that NTCA’s recommendations were only “suggestions or advice” and were not binding on the state government.
The high court, however, rejected this contention.
“No absurd or inconvenient consequence would result from construing this provision as mandatory. Instead, a problematic consequence might ensue by construing this provision as directory because then it would be open to the state government to defy the recommendation of an expert, high-powered central body constituted by parliamentary legislation for the specific purpose of adequate protection of the tiger and tiger habitat in India. If each State Government must be given the absolute discretion to notify or not to notify a tiger reserve, notwithstanding the strong recommendation of NTCA, the protection of the tiger, our national animal, and its habitat would be rendered a casualty,” the bench of justices MS Sonak and Bharat Deshpande said.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority has on several occasions in the past, most recently in 2020, recommended setting up of a tiger sanctuary in Goa at the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary.
The recommendation was made in the wake of the death of four tigers, a tigress and three adolescent cubs in 2019 in the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary.
In its February 2020 report, NTCA said: “The protected areas of Goa (Mhadei and Mollem) are part of the Western Ghats landscape complex which has the unique distinction of having the world’s largest tiger population. This landscape has several interconnected tiger reserves and protected areas along with reserve forests. However, factors like plantations, agriculture, industrial and infrastructure development activities like widening of roads and railway lines are threatening the existing habitat connectivity in the Western Ghats. Without upgrading the legal status of Goa’s protected areas to that of a tiger reserve and putting in place a strong protection regime in place, the state may become a death trap for tigers dispersing in this landscape”.
NTCA made similar recommendations in 2011 and 2016 as well.
The high court said though the expert committee report was given to the state government, hardly any steps were taken and the death of four tigers was treated as “some one-off incident without appreciating the severe implications”.
“Even three years after the submission of this detailed report by the NTCA’s expert committee, the proposal for notifying the tiger reserve moved no further. We say nothing further!” the high court observed.
Earlier this month, the State Wildlife Board ruled that setting up a tiger reserve in Goa was ‘premature’ and “not feasible” as per the guidelines of the National Tiger Conservation Authority.”
