(IN): It's official: Panna reserve has no tiger

[Guest guest]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Its-official-Panna-reserve-has-no-tiger/artic\

leshow/4653794.cms

 

*It's official: Panna reserve has no tiger*

 

14 Jun 2009, 0408 hrs IST, Suchandana Gupta, TNN

BHOPAL: It's now official: Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh has no

tiger. A national park that once boasted of having over 40 tigers six

years ago,

has repeated the Sariska story. State's minister for forests Rajendra Shukla

confirmed on Friday what was being suspected: that the last resident tiger

of the reserve sighted early this year is untraceable.

 

There are only two borrowed tigresses, translocated from nearby Kanha and

Badhavgarh, left in the park. These were meant to accompany the last of the

tiger at Panna.

 

A special investigation team, headed by former chief of Project Tiger P K

Sen, was sent to Panna by National Tiger

Conservation<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Its-official-Panna-reserve-has-n\

o-tiger/articleshow/4653794.cms#>Authority

last month. The team conducted an inquiry and interviews — all on

camera — to now claim that Panna has lost all of its own tigers. The team

members visited Panna again on June 10 and rechecked park's logs and

documents and went back to New Delhi on Friday. The team's final report on

the disappeared tigers is expected to be submitted to the Centre by the end

of this month.

 

As the central team of wildlife investigators left, forest minister Rajendra

Shukla admitted that the tiger count in Panna was zero. The state

government, he said, has formed a committee to fix responsibility for the

disappearance of tigers from Panna.

 

The latest investigation is in sharp contrast with a report published in the

June 2008 edition of an

environment<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Its-official-Panna-reserve-has-no\

-tiger/articleshow/4653794.cms#>magazine,

where state principal chief conservator of forests H S Pabla had

claimed that Panna was flourishing with tigers. However, in December last

year, a survey conducted by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) found only

one surviving tiger in the national park.

 

<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Its-official-Panna-reserve-has-no-tiger/arti\

cleshow/4653794.cms#>

 

--

http://www.stopelephantpolo.com

http://www.freewebs.com/azamsiddiqui