Wildlife conservationist urges Centre to withdraw Project Tiger-Elephant merger

On July 21, indianexpress.com highlighted how the Union Government’s decision to merge Project Tiger with Project Elephant has triggered concerns amongst wildlife conservationists.

In the August 13 letter, Kulkarni mentioned that though the Union Government has put in a transparent online system for project clearances in forest and wildlife areas, similar transparency is not visible when it comes to taking decisions that affect wildlife reserves and wildlife. “The present government was voted into power on the promise of good governance. Yet, in an unprecedented move, a merger of Project Tiger Division with Project Elephant Division has been done, without considering the milestone initiatives taken in the past by MoEF&CC (Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change) through Project Tiger Division for tiger conservation,” he said.

“The intention of the Ministry behind the merger for the implementation of the Centrally Sponsored Scheme- Project Tiger and Project Elephant is well appreciated. However, the plan to merge Project Tiger Division with Project Elephant Division may not sound good especially for the NTCA (The Statutory Authority overseeing the Project Tiger, an ongoing Centrally Sponsored Scheme of the MoEF&CC providing central assistance to the tiger States for tiger conservation in designated tiger reserves since 2006),” Kulkarni said.

Launched in 1973, Project Tiger is considered to be one of the most successful species conservation programs in the world by forest officials and conservationists. According to Kulkarni, Project Tiger has put the endangered wild tigers of India on a path of assured recovery. Elaborating further he added, “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. No other project could reach the status of Project Tiger because many of these projects neither received requisite funding support nor suitable officials were posted. The learnings from the Project Tiger led to the creation of the NTCA which basically provides statutory backing to the tiger conservation agenda in India.

“Project Tiger and the NTCA are role models which need to be emulated across the Country in the field of wildlife conservation which has been possible mainly because of the administrative autonomy of Project Tiger Division and NTCA together. The rationale of the merger plan of the Ministry appears to be mainly from an administrative point of view and such a move may completely neglect even the most basic of ecological tenets. Such a merger may result in dilution of an extremely robust, statutorily backed, and science-based conservation success story of the country besides losing focus.”

Project Elephant, according to Kulkarni, has always received step-motherly treatment. “There was no strategic plan to strengthen the Project Elephant division by providing sufficient funding. But the move to merge Project Tiger with that of Project Elephant has given rise to serious concerns in the wildlife conservationists’ circle of the country that it is only matter of time that Project Tiger will lose its edge in conserving endangered tiger as it will be bogged down in the bureaucratic quagmire of MoEF&CC,” he said.

He pointed out that in 2020, the Union Environment Ministry came out with an idea of reorganising the regional offices of NTCA, Forest Survey of India (FSI), Central Zoo Authority (CZA), and Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) and created so-called Integrated Regional Offices (IRO). “The MoEF&CC recently withdrew the order of reorganization and restored the regional offices of NTCA, CZA, FSI and WCCB to their earlier status for unknown reasons and I myself had challenged the reorganization in the High Court of Karnataka by filing a Public Interest Litigation in 2020,” he added.

“There is no doubt that this merger of Project Tiger Division with Project Elephant Division will create a totally unwarranted hierarchy leading to administrative confusion, chaos, inefficiency, and inordinate delays in CSS-Project Tiger implementation. This unnecessary move of merging two divisions of the Ministry defeats the purpose of creating statutory bodies like NTCA and it will also have far reaching implications for tiger conservation in India. Many Conservationists are of the opinion that you being the Chair of Standing Committee of National Board for Wildlife and also being the Chair of National Tiger Conservation Authority, should spare your time before it becomes too late and seriously look into the affairs of MoEF&CC that is busy undoing the conservation gains achieved over last few decades by taking irrational decisions such as closing down of Project Tiger Division, weakening of forest and wildlife laws,” he added.

In 2011, the Planning Commission decided to merge the three centrally funded schemes- Project Tiger, Project Elephant, and Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats into one but was dropped by the environment ministry.

“Therefore, it is definitely not a good decision to merge the Project Tiger and Project Elephant Divisions, the move which was already dropped by the same Ministry earlier and the Office Order of the Ministry to merge these both divisions is in gross violation of the Ministry’s decision taken earlier,” Kulkarni said.