WWF tried to poach in Sunderbans: Govt

West Bengal’s chief conservator of forests, A K Raha, who is also director of the Biosphere Reserve, has written another letter to Singh objecting on the same grounds.

In the letters, copies of which are with The Indian Express, the Ministry and the West Bengal government have alleged that the WWF-India employee tried to recover a tiger skin posing as a poacher and offered Rs 50,000 to residents of the area.

The letters mainly object to the fact that reserve authorities were kept in the dark about the operation.

Dr Rajesh Gopal, director, Project Tiger, Environment Ministry, in his April 26 letter to WWF-India, wrote: ‘‘It goes without saying, such attempts would do more harm than good by luring people to crime.’’ The letter also asks the global NGO to keep the Ministry informed about all its field initiatives.

Dr Gopal told The Indian Express: ‘‘It’s really unfortunate that the WWF should foster such activities that could lead to the killing of a tiger in a poverty-stricken landscape. They are luring people into crime. They should complement the government’s purpose not act on their own.’’

In his April 21 letter, A K Raha pointed out that the WWF-India activist approached the authorities for help after he failed in his attempts to get a tiger skin.

Raha also asked Singh to issue instructions so that ‘‘such occurrences, giving rise to mistrust between West Bengal forest department and WWF-India does not take place in future.’’

When contacted, WWF-India’s Ravi Singh said: ‘‘This is an internal matter, between the Ministry and us. I don’t want to comment.’’

The story of the vanishing tigers was first reported in The Indian Express and led to a CBI probe in Sariska and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh setting up a special task force on the issue—it will meet tomorrow.