• The Chhattisgarh government has issued a notification declaring Guru Ghasidas National Park and Tamor Pingla wildlife sanctuary as a tiger reserve, taking the number of such protected areas for big cats to four in the state.

• It will be called Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve. 

• It is the 56th tiger reserve of the country. 

• The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) had accorded final approval for notifying the  Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve in October 2021.

• In August this year, Chhattisgarh cabinet had decided to declare Guru Ghasidas National Park and Tamor Pingla wildlife sanctuary as tiger reserve. 

• The decision came after the Chhattisgarh High Court in July granted four weeks to the state government to clarify its stand on declaring the area as tiger reserve on a public interest litigation. 

Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve

• As per the notification, Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve is  spread over an area of 2829.387 square kilometres, including 2049.232 sqkm core area, in Korea, Surajpur, Balrampur and Manendragarh-Chirmiri- Bharatpur districts. 

• Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla tiger reserve will be the country’s third largest tiger reserve. Nagarjunasagar Srisailam tiger reserve in Andhra Pradesh is the country’s largest tiger reserve with an area of 3296.31 sqkm followed by Assam’s Manas tiger reserve with an area of 2837.1 sqkm. 

• A total of 753 species, including 365 invertebrates and 388 vertebrates, have been documented from Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve by the Zoological Survey of India. 

• The invertebrate fauna is represented mostly by the class insecta. The vertebrate fauna includes 230 species of birds and 55 species of mammals comprising several threatened species from both the groups.

• The country’s last cheetah died in present day Korea district in 1947 in the area which falls in Guru Ghasidas national park. 

• Nestled in the Chota Nagpur plateau and partly in Baghelkhand plateau, the tiger reserve is blessed with varied terrains, dense forests, streams and rivers favourable for harbouring a rich faunal diversity and contains critical habitats for the tiger.

• Forests of Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla, located in the northern part of the state, act as a corridor between the Bandhavgarh (Madhya Pradesh) and Palamu (Jharkhand) tiger reserves. 

• Indravati (in Bijapur district), Udanti-Sitanadi (Gariaband) and Achanakmar (Mungeli) are the other tiger reserves in Chhattisgarh. 

Project Tiger

• In 1973, the Project Tiger was established with the objective of utilising the tiger’s functional role and charisma to garner public support and resources for preserving representative ecosystems. 

• Project Tiger is an ongoing centrally sponsored scheme of the ministry of environment, forests and climate change providing central assistance to the tiger states for tiger conservation in designated tiger reserves.

• Since its inception, the project has expanded from nine tiger reserves to 56.

• The tiger reserves are constituted on a core/buffer strategy. The core areas have the legal status of a national park or a sanctuary, whereas the buffer or peripheral areas are a mix of forest and non-forest land, managed as a multiple use area.

• Most tiger reserves and protected areas in India are existing as small islands in a vast sea of ecologically unsustainable land use, and many tiger populations are confined to small protected areas. Although some habitat corridors exist that allow tiger movement between them, most of these habitats are not protected areas, continue to deteriorate further due to unsustainable human use and developmental projects, and thereby are not conducive to animal movement.

• Project Tiger aims to foster an exclusive tiger agenda in the core areas of tiger reserves, with an inclusive people oriented agenda in the buffer.

• The conservation of tigers in India can be divided into two phases. The first phase starting in the 1970s, involved the enactment of the Wildlife Protection Act and the establishment of protected areas that helped conserve tigers and tropical forest ecosystems.

• However, in the 1980s, the trade in tiger parts began to decimate the population, leading to a shocking revelation of local extinction of Tigers in the Sariska Tiger Reserve in 2005 and thus began the second phase. 

• The second phase began in 2005-06, with the government adopting a landscape-level approach and implementing strict monitoring for tiger conservation.

Challenges for tiger conservation

• Despite efforts to conserve tigers, there are still several challenges that need to be addressed. 

• One of the major challenges is aligning the aspirations of large-scale economic development while safeguarding forests and their wildlife and mitigating human-tiger conflict. 

• Other silent and surmounting threats are climate change-related impacts on habitats and the loss of the quality of forests over time. 

• Out of the approximately 400,000 sqkm of forests in tiger states, only one-third are in relatively healthier condition. 

• Another significant challenge is the illegal wildlife trade. Even though poaching is illegal, the demand for tiger products remains high, and poachers continue to kill tigers for profit. 

• To combat this, the Indian government has implemented strict laws and increased surveillance to prevent poaching and illegal trade.

• To ensure the long-term survival of tigers in India, a multi-faceted approach is needed, including protecting and expanding tiger habitats, preserving population connectivity, minimising human-tiger conflicts, and combating threats like habitat loss, poaching, and illegal trade. 

• It is important to restore habitats, increase ungulate populations, and plan reintroduction of tigers in low density areas to tackle conflict issues. 

• The involvement of various stakeholders, such as governments, NGOs, local communities, and businesses, is crucial. 

• Strategies like increased patrolling, monitoring, and law enforcement, focus on “Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECM)” along with promoting eco-tourism and sustainable livelihoods for local communities, can help achieve this goal.

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