Where tourists dare

The Centres new guidelines limit tiger tourism,but poaching remains the real threat

The Centres new guidelines limit tiger tourism,but poaching remains the real threat

Sobered by the Supreme Courts ban on tourism in the core areas of tiger reserves,which has been in place for two months now,the Centre presented a new set of tourism guidelines on Wednesday. These tread a cautious middle path,asking for regulated,low-impact tourism in 20 per cent of the core tiger habitat,a conservation fee to be paid by the tourism industry to state governments and pulling the brakes on new tourism infrastructure within the core areas. They appear to strike a balance between conservation,tourism and the needs of the local population in and around the reserves,and restore some perspective to a debate that had tilted towards a simple-minded targeting of tourism for the predicament of the tiger.

Good intentions have never been the problem with the Centres tiger conservation policy anyway. It was the Wildlife Protection Act of India that had recommended,as far back as 1972,that tiger habitat be divided into core areas and buffer zones. Yet,until the SC imposed its ban on July 24 this year,most states had not notified these areas. The current guidelines are not enforceable either. States are merely directed to formulate their own legislation in sync with the guidelines and tourism plans will be site specific. But a set of prescriptive guidelines imposed by a remote Centre is not likely to make a material difference to tiger conservation,especially when the Centre has been wildly inconsistent. The National Tiger Conservation Authoritys NTCAs own guidelines had previously said that core areas should be considered inviolate and last year,it had filed an affidavit in the SC,urging that this be enforced. Soon after the SC ordered a temporary ban on tourism in core areas,the ministry of environment and forests and the NTCA filed another affidavit,pleading that the existing guidelines be revised since they affected local populations that depended on tourism for a livelihood.

While tourism has dominated the debate on conservation,a more chilling failure has been sidelined. That the court has to step in at all to limit tourism is proof of the erratic government approach on conservation and its inadequate implementation. But tourism did not bring down the tiger population to 1,700,poaching did. On that,the Centre has no guidelines to offer.