PANAJI
The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change told Parliament that they have not received any proposal from Goa to notify Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary as a Tiger reserve.
Replying to a question by South Goa MP Capt Viriato Fernandes, the ministry said that so far no proposal has been received from the State of Goa.
The Goa government has constantly resisted notifying the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary and surrounding protected areas as a tiger reserve despite the documented presence of tigers.
The State government has also challenged the Bombay High Court at Goa direction to set up a tiger reserve in the State and has spent Rs 90 lakh on two preliminary hearings in the SC so far.
The then Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh had written to the Goa government back in 2011 asking them to send a proposal to the Centre for the declaration of the Mhadei wildlife sanctuary as a tiger reserve.
The union minister said that the tiger is a resident animal in the State and not a transitory animal besides was also contiguous with the Dandeli tiger reserve in neighbouring Karnataka. However, the State government was reluctant to concur with such a decision.
Similarly in 2020 the National Tiger Conservation Authority, recommended the setting up of a tiger sanctuary in Goa at the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary in the wake of the deaths of four tigers a tigress and three nearly adult cubs in 2019 in the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary.
“The protected areas of Goa (Mhadei and Mollem) are part of the Western Ghats landscape complex which has the unique distinction of having the world's largest tiger population. This landscape has several interconnected tiger reserves and protected areas along with reserve forests,” the NTCA noted in a report submitted in February 2020.
Neither recommendations were acted upon by the Goa government and no proposal was ever sent.
