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NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday reserved orders on the proposed tiger safari plan at the Jim Corbett national park, observing that the Centre ought to have adopted a “cautious approach” in granting approval to the project.
A bench headed by justice BR Gavai also underlined that captive animals from the zoo cannot be permitted to be brought into the wild in the name of tiger safari and told the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) that its 2019 guidelines on tiger safari permitting this need “tweaking”.
Also Read: Cannot permit zoo in a national park, says SC on proposed tiger safari at Corbett
“Your 2019 guidelines on tiger safari may require some tweaking,” said the bench, also comprising justices PK Mishra and Sandeep Mehta, on the 2019 guidelines that provided for tiger safaris at buffer or fringe areas of national parks to reduce the pressure of tourists visiting core and critical areas of tiger habitats.
The court was hearing a petition filed by environment activist and lawyer Gaurav Bansal that challenged the Uttarakhand government’s proposal to have a tiger safari, a specialised zoo with caged animals, at the national park. The court appointed advocate K Parmeshwar as amicus curiae to understand if such a facility could be introduced within a national park or sanctuary.
According to the plan, the safari envisaged animals from the zoo to be brought into the wild and kept in cages for purposes of tourism. The Centre justified its in-principle approval of the plan in 2014, reasoning that such a “specialised zoo” was not new and cited examples of Bannerghata biological park at Bengaluru.
During the proceedings in the top court, senior advocate ANS Nadkarni appearing for the state government told the court that the direction to move a proposal came from the Centre and it had received approval from the Central Zoo Authority and the forest clearance from ministry of environment, forests and climate change (MoEFCC).
Gaurav Bansal told the court that the original plan proposed the safari at Kanvashram. The present safari site at Pakhrau got in-principle approval from the authorities, including NTCA without a site visit.
Bansal also showed a report by the state’s chief wildlife warden in July 2020 which said, “prima facie, this place is not suitable for tiger safari,” as it was an area used by tigers and would affect the tiger habitat, which was contrary to NTCA guidelines.
The bench said, “The MoEFCC should be taking a cautious approach by taking NTCA on board. The MoEFCC is a superior body to NTCA and it grants permission along with approval from central zoo authority (CZA).”
The court maintained that no animal from the zoo would be permitted to be brought into the wild. “Only injured, old or orphaned animals or man-eater tigers involved in man-animal conflict could be rescued and rehabilitated.”
The bench said: “Whatever is to be done now has to be done for the future. Let us not get into a blame game and find a solution instead. We will try to do something for the future as it is not that the Uttarakhand government did something grossly wrong as both CZA and MoEFCC being the highest authorities gave approvals.”
The court also examined maps produced by the state government to show that Pakhrau was situated on the edge of the Corbett tiger reserve. The bench said, “It is not as if they are proposing a site in the midst of the forest as we find it is on the edge with resorts on one side.”
The tiger safari planned at Pakhrau is on land measuring 106 hectares. The state government informed the court that this area constituted only 0.082% of the total area at Corbett and 0.22% of the buffer area of the tiger reserve. The project started with all requisite approvals from the NTCA in 2015, the CZA in 2019 and the forest clearances from the MoEFCC in October 2020 and September 2021.
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