Hyderabad: The officials of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) will visit the two villages of Rampur and Maisampet in Nirmal district to verify how important the relocation of the villages is. They will also inspect the 112 hectares of land proposed in the Khanpur forest reserve for the new village.
Once NTCA gives the nod for the relocation, the State Board for Wildlife, chaired by the state forest minister, will give the clearance for de-reserving the forest land for creation of the new village. The National Board for Wildlife will give the final clearances.
The forest department will pay '10 lakh to each family and provide the house site. There are about 37 families in Rampur and 105 families in Maisampet that will have to be relocated.
The forest department also wants to relocate another 26 villages in Kawal Tiger Reserve and eight villages in Amrabad Tiger Reserve. If the shifting of the two villages in the first phase is successfully done, the forest department hopes the other villages will be more agreeable to shifting. In Amrabad Tiger Reserve, three villages — Vatvarla-pally, Kidichintala Bailu and Sarlapalle - have been identified for relocation in the first phase and another five villages in the second phase.
A senior wildlife expert said, “The villages create disturbance to wildlife. If there is a village, then there will be agriculture, vehicle movement and other issues too. The tigers on sighting the humans try to move away from them. So we want to relocate the villages and make them flat lands. Later the existing villages will be developed as grass lands.”
