RTI activist Ajay Dubey of Madhya Pradesh, who shot into prominence with his Supreme Court petition asking for better monitoring of tiger reserves, feels he was justified in having sought redressal from the highest court.
“Madhya Pradesh had 700 tigers in 2000 but their numbers are down to 257,” said Mr Dubey who runs an environmental protection group, Prayatna.
“Thirty-five tigers were lost in Panna alone from 2000. Undoubtedly, they died at the hands of poachers but my question is why was the ministry of environment so lax in implementing the Wildlife Protection Act 1972?” he asked.
His other major grouse was why neither the tourism industry or the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) have made no attempt to spend their considerable earnings on the tribal communities living in dire poverty in India’s 41 tiger reserves.
“Ten per cent of the NTCA funding should be spent on the tribals. People in tourism need to give a percentage of their earnings to the tribal communities who are being made to do all the menial jobs,” he said.
“Our national heritage, in terms of both forests and wildlife, has been destroyed. RTIs show that there only two poachers have been convicted (post-Independence) for killing tigers while there have been four convictions for killing panthers,” he pointed out. Mr Dubey began to focus on wildlife following his exposure to the extensive illegal mining in the forests of Madhya Pradesh. “Through RTIs, we learnt there are 6,000 illegal major mines and 10,000 minor mines. Neither the mining nor the timber mafia want this notification of core and buffer zones to be implemented as this will put an end to their illegal activity.”
Mr Dubey, who was recently awarded the Sitaram Jindal Foundation Prize 2012 for his activism, believes the time has come for the country to move into a more “responsible tourism mode”.