Mukundra Hills of Kota in Rajasthan and some of its adjoining areas have been notified as a tiger reserve. It would be called Mukundra Hills tiger reserve ( MHTR). It doesn’t have any tiger, though.
Interestingly, the Rajasthan government okayed the reserve without the “ recommendation” by National Tiger Conservation Authority ( NTCA), a mandatory provision under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, as amended in 2006.
Section 38 ( V) ( 1) of the Act says, “ The state government shall, on the recommendation of the NTCA, notify an area as a tiger reserve.” Besides lacking proper recommendation, the area selected for the MHTR, around 150 km away from Ranthambhore, is very poor in prey base. Even if tigers are translocated there from Ranthambhore, as the forest department proposes, it would be difficult for them to survive.
On December 15, 2010, Rajesh Gopal, NTCA’s member secretary, had written a letter to the state forest department agreeing in principal the latter’s idea of developing Mukundra tiger reserve. However, it was incumbent on the state government to get its project weighed by the NTCA board before the latter officially recommended to the state for the notification, sources pointed out.
The state government apparently bypassed the procedural requirement.
State’s additional principal chief conservator of forest A. S. Brar said “ now an indicative tiger conservation plan would be prepared and sent to the NTCA for approval and financial assistance”. A retired senior forest officer ridiculed his ex- colleagues and said as they had committed a legal blunder now they would multiply it further by requesting the NTCA to ratify their notification.
Rajasthan’s chief conservator of forest ( wildlife) P. S. Somshekar, however, asserted that Mukundra reserve would function as a satellite core area for Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve ( RTR) as its corridor.
Ironically, authorities even failed to develop prey base in Keladevi Sanctuary spread over 676.65 sq km that is contiguous to Ranthambhore National Park ( RNP) and was included in Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve ( RTR) in 1991. Even Keladevi does not have a single big cat.
Forest department plans to translocate tigers from Ranthambhore that finds it difficult to accommodate its present population endangering tigers. It was in this background that it was decided to shift tigers from Ranthambhore to Sariska under its repopulation programme at the behest of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2008 as it became tigerless around 2004.
Experts pooh- poohed the forest department’s argument of developing a corridor for Ranthambhore around Mukundra Hills. They pointed out that the RTR spreading over 1,334 sq km, comprising Ranthambhore National Park of 274.5 sq km and the two contiguous sanctuaries — Sawai Man Singh and Keladevi — could not develop beyond the RNP. Calling the state government’s notification for Mukundra reserve an “ eye wash”, Sunayan Sharma, senior vice- president of Sariska Tiger Foundation, maintained that it was impractical and naive in view of the very poor prey base and small area.
']]}