Hyderabad: The issue of tiger protection and the management of two tiger reserves in Telangana — Amrabad and Kawal — appears to have landed on the desk of Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy. Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav wrote to him to address the issue of vacancies of frontline staff in the tiger reserves. A similar letter was also sent to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.
It may be recalled that Deccan Chronicle had highlighted the frontline staff vacancies in its ‘NTCA finds TG, AP fall far short in forest staff in tiger protection’ on April 7. In its stock-taking exercise, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) found that while Telangana had a shortage of 41.61 per cent of frontline tiger protection staff, this figure was higher for AP at 62.17 per cent.
In his letter dated April 25 to Revanth Reddy, Bhupender Yadav said as per the NTCA review, vacancies were observed across functions among frontline staff in tiger reserves, including critical posts such as Range Officers, Foresters, and Forest Guards.
Yadav sought “personal intervention in the matter of filling of these vacancies,” and described such staff as the “backbone of our tiger reserves.” He further said, “it is imperative to fill up the vacancies in a time-bound manner through a special drive, keeping in of the forthcoming 6th cycle of All India Tiger Estimation.”
The tiger estimation is a once-in-four-year exercise that thoroughly examines tiger reserves, as well as other forest areas in the country for the presence of tigers, and leopards, and after the evidence is sifted through by specialists in the Wildlife Institute of India, the estimated tiger numbers are released.
Each tiger reserve is supposed to have a management plan which cannot be implemented unless all the required posts are filled up.
When asked about the vacancies, Chief Wildlife Warden for Telangana, Elusing Meru, said the department has around 1,800 vacancies and the state public service commission has been asked to initiate steps for recruitment.