Safari at Corbett won’t affect tiger habitat: Uttarakhand in Supreme Court
In an affidavit filed on April 9, the state government told the court that the tiger safari will be held at Pakhrau.
Having tiger safari at Corbett national park will not endanger the population of tigers in the wild, the Uttarakhand government told the Supreme Court, as it sought permission to carry on with the project that was 80% complete.
The Uttarakhand government said the tiger safari projects is 80% complete.
In an affidavit filed on April 9, the state government told the court that the tiger safari will be held at Pakhrau, located at the southern edge of the reserve and on a land measuring 106 hectares which constitutes only 0.082% of the total area at Corbett and 0.22% of the buffer area of the tiger reserve.
“Any observation that it (tiger safari) will shrink the available tiger habitat or impede the dispersal of wild animals does not hold good,” the state government said opposing the recommendation of the Central Empowered Committee (CEC), the court-appointed expert panel on forest and environment issues, for withdrawal of permission for the tiger safari.
The CEC report submitted on January 24 came on an application filed by advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal who alleged that the tiger safari led to illegal felling of trees and rampant construction inside forests with the purpose of creating a resort with man-made water bodies.
The Uttarakhand government said that though the project began with all requisite approvals from the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in 2015, the Central Zoo Authority in 2019 and the forest clearances from the ministry of environment, forests and climate change (MoEF&CC) in October 2020 and in September 2021, during its execution, certain irregularities were committed by officials incharge of the work. The state has initiated legal action against such officials and even destroyed most of the illegal structures, it said.
“The present project is 80% complete and a large amount of public money has already been spent,” the state said, pointing out that sourcing of tigers from the zoo may be open to discussion but establishing a tiger safari in the buffer zone of Corbett should be out of question.
“The whole idea of establishment of this safari is to encourage visitors to consider coming to Pakhrau…thus reducing pressure on Ramnagar and other visitor zones of Corbett,” it added.
A bench of justices BR Gavai, Vikram Nath and Sanjay Karol agreed to examine the affidavit on May 3.
