Times
of India: New Delhi: Monday, 24 November 2014.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has
given in-principle approval for creation of Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla tiger
reserve in Chhattisgarh.
The NTCA here has sought a final proposal from the
state administration in this regard, officials said.
The proposal to declare Guru Ghasidas National Park as
a tiger reserve was proposed in June 2011 by the then Minister of State
(Independent Charge) for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh to Chhattisgarh
Chief Minister Raman Singh.
The national park lies between two important tiger
reserves Bandhavgarh (Madhya Pradesh) and Palamau (Jharkhand) and is also
contiguous with the Sanjay-Dubri tiger reserve (Madhya Pradesh) is about 450 km
away from state capital Raipur.
The area was surveyed by the Wildlife Institute of
India in 2010. Though the prey population in the habitat is low at present, it
has considerable diversity. Therefore, with good management and protection
under Project Tiger, the area has a potential for supporting a viable tiger
population along with the Sanjay-Dubri tiger reserve, Ramesh had said.
"This would ensure the largest landscape within
the part of central India for tiger conservations," he had said in the
letter and sought a proposal from the state government in this regard.
The in-principle approval for creation of the reserve
has been given and a final proposal has been sought from the Chhattisgarh
government, said the letter written by NTCA to the state and accessed by
wildlife activist Ajay Dubey, who hails from state's Korea district, in
response to an RTI query.
Chhattisgarh has three tiger reserves Indravati,
Udanti-Sitanadi and Achanakmar. It has an 26 tigers in its reserves, according
to an NTCA data on the big cats census of 2010. The country has an estimated
1,706 tigers in its various reserves, the data said.