Centre merges Project Tiger and Project Elephant ‘without any discussion’; experts demand PM intervention

Senior forest officials and wildlife experts say that it is only a matter of time before Project Tiger will lose its edge in conserving endangered tigers as it will be bogged down in the bureaucratic quagmire of MoEF&CC. They say that Project Tiger was given a quiet burial with the merger.

Meanwhile, the Project Elephant division had been with the Wildlife Division of the union environment ministry since its creation.

Conservationists feel that the Prime Minister, who is also the chair of the National Board for Wildlife, should look into the affairs of MoEF&CC. “For the moment, the Prime Minister should immediately intervene and order for withdrawal of Project Tiger merger order and restore the sanctity of Project Tiger division,
they said. Given the precarious status of Indian elephants, they also want the Project Elephant division to continue as a separate division with a focus on elephant conservation. “The Prime Minister should also ensure that necessary administrative and financial support is provided to Project Elephant division to make it a functional division. Otherwise, the short-sighted decision to discontinue Project Tiger by the vested interests within the ministry, that too during Project Tiger’s 50th commemorative year, will be perceived by the people as one of the biggest blunders in the wildlife conservation history of India committed by the ruling BJP dispensation,” said a wildlife expert.

After the merger, the staff and divisional heads of Project Elephant (PE) will now report to the additional director general of forests (ADGF), Project Tiger (PT), who has now been designated as ADGF (PT&E).

The Inspector General Forests and Project Director, Project Elephant, will be the divisional head of the PT&E division and will be reporting to the ADGF (PT&E), who is also the member secretary of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA). While the announcement of the merger was announced in April the official order in this regard was issued two months later, on June 23, a copy of which is accessed by The Indian Express.

An official who had earlier worked in Project Elephant said that Project Elephant, which focuses on conserving the Indian Elephant, one of the megaherbivores of India, has always received stepmotherly treatment.

“There was no strategic plan to strengthen the Project Elephant division by providing sufficient funding and posting technically competent officials in managing the affairs of the division. The current Inspector General Forests, who has become the head of the newly created Project Tiger & Elephant Division, is donning many hats,” the officer said adding that the merger has created uneasiness within the wildlife division officials as they were “mute spectators” to the development.

On April 9, Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated in the programme to commemorate 50 years of Project Tiger in Mysuru. During the function, he launched the International Big Cat Alliance aimed at conserving big cats of the world on similar lines of Project Tiger.

“Launched in 1973, Project Tiger is probably one of the most successful species conservation programmes in the world. Started with mere nine tiger reserves, today the Project Tiger has 53 tiger reserves spread over 75,000 km and more than 70 per cent of the world’s wild tigers are thriving in Indian forests. This unique conservation programme has put the endangered wild tigers of India on a path of assured recovery. In fact, Project Tiger was the precursor for the launch of other species conservation projects such as Project Elephant and recently Project Lion and Project Cheetah,” said a conservationist said, requesting anonymity. He said no other project could attain the status of Project Tiger as it neither received requisite funding nor suitable officials. The learnings from the Project Tiger led to the creation of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) which basically provides statutory backing to the tiger conservation agenda in India.

An officer from the Karnataka Forest Department, on condition of anonymity, said that the move to merge Project Tiger with Project Elephant has given rise to serious concerns in the wildlife conservation circle of the country. “Ever since the current member secretary of NTCA has assumed the charge of erstwhile Project Tiger, the tiger conservation agenda took a backseat as he holds multiple charges within the environment ministry. For example, last year the majority of the tiger reserves of India didn’t receive funding support under Project Tiger because of the difficulty in implementing the fund release procedure unveiled by the Finance Ministry,” the officer said.

“Despite several suggestions given to NTCA to ease out fund release-related problems, the NTCA chief didn’t bother at all. We are in the second quarter of the financial year and not a single tiger reserve has been given any funding assistance so far,” the officer alleged.

One of the main reasons behind the success of Project Tiger, as pointed out by wildlife experts, was that it was manned by technically competent officials who also worked for NTCA. “But this is not the first time that the clueless forest officials manning various positions within MoEF&CC have committed a blunder. In 2020, the Environment Ministry came up with an idea of merging the regional offices of NTCA, Forest Survey of India (FSI), Central Zoo Authority (CZA), Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) and creating ‘integrated regional offices’ (IRO),” said a wildlife expert.

While the ministry claimed that the move aimed at making the administration more efficient, the MoEF&CC recently withdrew the order and restored the regional offices of NTCA, CZA, FSI and WCCB to their earlier status due to legal intervention.