Forest and Wildlife Resources
Protecting wildlife by law
Describe how the government protects forests and wildlife.
The 1972 law. In the 1960s and 1970s, conservationists asked for a national plan to protect wildlife. The Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act came in 1972. It did three main things:
- banned hunting;
- gave legal protection to habitats (the places where animals live);
- restricted trade in wildlife.
The government published a list of protected species for the whole country, and national parks and wildlife sanctuaries were set up.
Special projects for animals in danger. The government ran projects for the tiger, the one-horned rhinoceros, the hangul (Kashmir stag), three kinds of crocodile (freshwater, saltwater and the gharial) and the Asiatic lion. Later the Indian elephant, blackbuck, great Indian bustard (godawan) and snow leopard got full or partial protection.
Project Tiger, 1973. At the start of the century India had an estimated 55,000 tigers. By 1973 only 1,827 were left: roughly thirty times fewer. Why?
- poaching for trade: tiger skins, and bones used in traditional medicines;
- shrinking habitat and fewer prey animals;
- a growing human population.
India and Nepal hold about two-thirds of the world's surviving tigers, so poachers targeted them. Saving the tiger also means saving the whole large habitat it lives in.
Tiger reserves to remember:
- Corbett (Uttarakhand);
- Sunderbans (West Bengal);
- Bandhavgarh (Madhya Pradesh);
- Sariska (Rajasthan);
- Manas (Assam);
- Periyar (Kerala).
Not just big animals. Conservation now looks at all of biodiversity. Notifications in 1980 and 1986 added several hundred butterflies, moths and beetles and one dragonfly to the protected list. In 1991 plants were added for the first time: six species.
Three kinds of forest.
- Reserved forests: more than half of all forest land; the most valuable for protecting forests and wildlife. Think of a 'reserved' card on a table: kept aside.
- Protected forests: about one-third; guarded from any further loss.
- Unclassed forests: the rest; owned by the government, by private people and by communities.
Reserved and protected forests together are called permanent forest estates. Madhya Pradesh has the largest area of them (75 per cent of its forests). In all north-eastern states and parts of Gujarat, most forests are unclassed and managed by local communities.
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