Tiger corridors face ‘land’ roadblock
Big cats need more space due to increase in their population
Hyderabad: Tiger corridor plans in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have failed to take off as the forest departments of both states are finding it difficult to acquire land.
Tiger corridors are forest passages between tiger reserves, which the big cats can use to move out once their populations increase, and settle down in new locations.
Two major hurdles exist currently. One, private land between the tiger corridors has to be acquired by the forest department, which requires a lot of money. The other hurdle is taking back forest land, which has been encroached over the years and which is under cultivation.
In Telangana, a tiger corridor was planned to facilitate safe movement of tigers between the Tadoba Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra and the Kawal Tiger Reserve in Telangana and further into the Indravati Tiger Reserve of Chhattisgarh.
In Andhra Pradesh, a tiger corridor was planned spanning four protected areas to facilitate movement of the increasing tiger population in the Nagarjunsagar Srisailam Tiger Reserve (NSTR) into south through the Gundla Brahmeshwaram Sanctuary (GBM) in Kurnool, Lankamalleswara Wildlife Sanctuary in Kadapa, Sri Peninsula Narasimha Wildlife Sanctuary in Nellore and finally into S.V. National Park in Chittoor.
A senior AP forest department official said, “This route was earlier a tiger corridor but with increasing human interference, the tigers got restricted to NSTR and GBM. As tiger populations are now on the rise, the corridor needs to be developed so that they can spread and occupy the lands they once used to roam in.”
Lack of sufficient funding from the Central government has always been a problem.
However, a serious effort from the forest departments has also been missing. When asked if there existed at least a list of areas identified where land would have to acquired or if any strategy or action plan existed for the same, officials of both forest departments replied in the negative.
A lesson can be taken from the Karnataka forest department which is trying to get CSR funds so as to conduct land acquisitions along the tiger corridors.