Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla in Chhattishgarh notified as 56th Tiger Reserve

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla in Chhattisgarh notified as the 56th tiger reserve. Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve is spread over 2,829 sq km.

The Government of Chhattisgarh, on advice of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), notified the Guru Ghasidas - Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve across Manendragarh-Chirmiri-Bharatpur, Korea, Surajpur and Balrampur districts of Chhattisgarh. The tiger reserve, encompassing a total area of 2829.38 sq.kms, includes a core/critical tiger habitat of 2049.2 sq.kms, comprising the Guru Ghasidas National Park and Tamor Pingla Wildlife Sanctuary, and has a buffer of 780.15 sq.kms. This makes it the third largest tiger reserve in the country after Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve in Andhra Pradesh and Manas Tiger Reserve in Assam. The Guru Ghasidas- Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve becomes the 56^th Tiger Reserve to be notified in the country.

Keeping in view the landscape approach to conservation as envisaged in India’s National Wildlife Plan, the newly notified tiger reserve is contiguous with the Sanjay Dubri Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh forming a landscape complex of nearly 4500 sq.kms. Further, the tiger reserve is connected to the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh to the West and Palamau Tiger Reserve in Jharkhand to the East. The National Tiger Conservation Authority had accorded final approval for notifying the Guru Ghasidas- Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve in October, 2021.

Nestled in the Chota Nagpur plateau and partly in Baghelkhand plateau, the tiger reserve is blessed with varied terrains, dense forests, streams and rivers favourable for harbouring a rich faunal diversity and contains critical habitats for the tiger.

A total of 753 species, including 365 invertebrates and 388 vertebrates, have been documented from Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve by the Zoological Survey of India. The invertebrate fauna is represented mostly by the class insecta. The vertebrate fauna includes 230 species of birds and 55 species of mammals comprising several threatened species from both the groups.
With this notification, Chhattisgarh is now home to 4 Tiger Reserves, which is supposed to strengthen conservation of the species with ongoing technical and financial assistance from the National Tiger Conservation Authority under Project Tiger.

However, all is not well with Chhattishgarh’s forests. The Union Environment Minister had informed the Rajya Sabha on 25^thJuly that approximately 273,757 trees will be cut in Chhattisgarh's Hasdeo Arand forests inthe coming years. It is estimated by local activists that tree felling is rampant and more number of trees have already been cut. Hasdeo Arand is the largest contiguous stretch of very dense forests in central India, and beneath it lies massive coal reserves. It spans over 170,000 hectares and has 23 coal blocks. Two coal mines have already been set up in these forests --- Chotia I and II and the Parsa East and Kete Basan (PEKB), and two more are proposed: Parsa and the Kente Extension. The Government has used a 2021 study by a pliant arm of the Govt. namely Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education, Dehradun which had collaborated with Wildlife Institute of India. India is sacrificing its ecology for coal. Cutting centuries old hard growth trees to extract coal in these areas is going to destroy the ecology forever. No amount of fresh sapling plantation can compensate for it.