looking to improve its tally of tigers, Forest Department here is looking ahead to adopt a lucrative relocation policy for villages.The policy can be guided by what has been in practice at Kanha Tiger Reserve of Madhya Pradesh.
A team of six senior forest officials visited the Kanha Tiger Reserve between September 11 and 13 and found that the one of the best managed park of the country has no conflict as far as dislocation of forest dwellers is concerned.
“They pay Rs 10 lakh to the family to be relocated out of the park. Situation is so that there villagers come forward and sought for the package. But here, we have so many issues involved because we have no relocation policy that can attract people,” said a senior official who attended the meeting called in the pretext of tiger census commencing later this year.
Another official said that one can see open paddy fields with herds of deer sitting and flora growing following the relocation. The officials are also of the view that naxal threat to the animals and dwellers falling prey to wild animals can also be reduced substantially.
“The establishment has to take a call. But one thing that is different here from MP is population density. We have lot more villages situated in the forest areas,” added another.Several other tactics would be applied at PTR during the tiger estimation and local forest officials would be given training in October about the progarmme.