Goa wildlife board rejects tiger reserve proposal, CM Sawant says state doesn’t fit criteria

An official, requesting anonymity, said, “For notifying a tiger reserve, there are certain guidelines. A minimum inviolate space of 800-1,000 km needs to be maintained to support a viable population of tigers. Other criteria relate to the area required to constitute a critical tiger habitat and conditions of man-animal conflict. In Goa, which is a small state, the area is less and there are several Forest Rights Act claims that are not settled. There is no conclusive estimate of the tiger population in the state and the tigers that are spotted are migratory and transient. So, the board rejected the proposal as the declaration of a tiger reserve at the current stage would be premature.”

Rane did not respond to calls for comment. He has earlier said that Goa is not a habitat for tigers and that tigers found in the state are not resident tigers. “As long as I am the forest minister, there is no question of a tiger reserve,” he told the media last year.

The board’s decision comes at a time when the Bombay High Court at Goa is hearing a plea by the Goa Foundation, an NGO, seeking directions to notify a tiger reserve in the state.

In 2011, then Union forest and environment minister Jairam Ramesh urged the state government to submit a proposal to declare the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary as a tiger reserve. In 2016, the inspector-general of forests in the state wrote to the principal chief conservator of forests about setting up a tiger reserve.

Earlier, the NTCA also suggested that a tiger reserve be carved out from uninhabited core areas of Goa’s protected areas and requested the state to speed up the process of notifying the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary as a tiger reserve. In September 2022, the NTCA wrote to the Goa chief wildlife warden about setting up a tiger reserve in the state.

In 2020, after a tigress and three cubs were found dead inside the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary, and a subsequent probe revealed that the deaths occurred due to poisoning, the long-standing demand by environmentalists and conservationists for a tiger reserve in the state was renewed.

After the incident, the NTCA said in its report in 2020, “In view of the unfortunate death of tigers, the state government may take immediate steps for enhancing the legal status of Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary to that of a tiger reserve. Declaring the sanctuary as a tiger reserve will provide much-needed access to technical, financial and monitoring support from the NTCA for safeguarding the conservation values of the sanctuary.”

Meanwhile, at Wednesday’s meeting, the chief minister approved the water resource department’s proposal to construct a dam in Charaunem village in Sattari in the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary.

“The construction of a dam at Charaunem will not only give 250 farmer families sustainable water for irrigation but also indirectly benefit wild and domesticated animals as it will develop a new ecosystem,” said Sawant.