Wildlife Conservation

INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT OF WILDLIFE HABITAT

Government of India provides technical and financial support to the States and Union Territories for Wildlife Conservation under various centrally sponsored Schemes. Integrated Development of Wild Life Habitat Scheme 2009 is one of such Scheme which aimed at wildlife conservation. The Scheme has following three components:

Support to Protected Areas(PA) which includes National Parks, Wildlife Sanctuaries Conservation Reserves and Community Reserves;

Protection of Wildlife outside protected areas, and

Recovery programmes for saving critically endangered species and habitats.

Activities covered under this centrally sponsored scheme are as follows:

Management planning and capacity building which include

The Scheme in the following words highlights the necessity to preserve and conserve the habitat of wild buffalo:

Wild buffalo is one of the worst affected mammalian species in the recent times. Domestication of the species and continuous interbreeding with domestic buffalo has led to interbreeding, genetic disorders, competition and mortality due to disease. Apart from this, habitat fragmentation, degradation and poaching are the main threats to the conservation of this globally threatened species. Urgent and concerned efforts are needed to recover this species from the brink of extinction.”

Further IUCN is an unique global organisation, which started working in 1948, where both Governments and non-governmental bodies work together as parties. The IUCN has calculated the percentage of endangered species as 40% of all organisms. Its red list refers to specific categories of endangered species and includes critically endangered species. The IUCN Red List of Threatened species in the world’s most complete inventory of the global conservation status of plant and animal species. This uses the term “endangered species” as a particular category of endangerment, rather than as a general term. The wild buffalo, mentioned above is an ‘endangered species’ and hence requires special

No person shall also destroy or damage or divert, the habitat of wild animal by any act of divert, stop or enhance the flow of water into or outside the sanctuary without such prior permission. Such permission can only be granted if the State Government is satisfied in consultation with the Board that such removal of wild life from the sanctuary or the change in the flow of water is necessary for the improvement and better management of wild life therein.

F. Declaration of National Park Like the provisions of Section 18 relating to the declaration of sanctuary, Section 35 provides for declaration of National Park. Thus, whenever, the State Government feels that an area, whether within a sanctuary or not, is by reason of its ecological, faunal, floral, geomorphological or zoological association or importance, needed to be constituted as a National Park for the purpose of protecting, propagating or developing wildlife therein or its environment, it may, by notification, declare its intention to constitute such area as National park.

Where any area is intended to be declared as a National Park, the provision and procedure followed in case of declaration of sanctuary relating to investigation and determination of claims and settlement of rights in relation to any land in such area