| THE STATE OF THE TIGER | |
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Fish Mafia - The Exploitation of Protected Areas
Indian legislation clearly protects Tiger Reserves and National Parks under its Wildlife Protection Act and Forest Conservation Act. Despite this politicians and Forest Department officials have colluded with criminal interests to allow commercial fishing in the core area of Pench Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradsesh which borders Pench National Park in Maharashtra, a newly designated Tiger Reserve. The commerical proponents of fishing have argued that local people have traditional rights to fish in Pench Tiger Reserve. This is despite all the evidence that local people were not historically dependent on fishing since the Pench River is not perennial and the reservoir was only completed in 1990. In addition, no traditional fishing rights were claimed when the area was designated as a Reserve Forest in 1878. Pench's Powerful Fishing Lobby Threatens Tiger Reserve Fishing in the core area of Pench Tiger Reserve has already seriously affected this prime stretch of tiger habitat. Poachers have entered the park in the guise of fishermen and official records show that between 1992 and 1996, eight tigers and 16 leopards were known to have been poached in Pench Tiger Reserve. There were a further 98 poaching cases detected on prey species in the same period with at least 27 chital and sambar among the victims. Fishermen are also illegally extracting timber from the islands inside the reservoir, and when captured, fish poachers have set fire to the forest in retaliation. Dedicated senior forest officers have been transferred at crucial times and other staff have been beaten in outbreaks of serious violence. "Traditional Fishermen" Exposed When the dam and reservoir were built, seven villages were relocated and compensated by the Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra State Irrigation Departments to make way for the reservoir which was to submerge their agricultural land. Four of the villages in Madhya Pradesh were originally forest villages located by the Forest Department as a labour force. In May 1996 the Chief Wildlife Warden of Madhya Pradesh, Mr PK Mishra, instructed the Director of Pench to issue 305 permits for fishing in contravention of the Wildlife Protection Act. This number was derived from the electoral list for the four forest villages previously moved and compensated. An analysis of these 305 people shows that most now live 25 km from Totladoh Reservoir and some up to 100 km away. In 1995, the Maharashtra Fisheries Development Corporation and the Maharashtra Forest Minister offered to accommodate the Totladoh fishermen at a tank just outside the Pench National Park, but they refused. One forest officer has commented that this "indicates that some vested interests are misguiding the fishermen to continue illegal fishing at Totladoh". The Fish Mafia - Exploiting the Poor The Madhya Pradesh Fisheries Development Corporation (MPFDC) formed an illegal fisheries co-operative to exploit the fish in the reservoir as early as 1987. The "Fishermen Association of Totladoh", claimed to represent 700 families who reportedly were dependent on fish from Totladoh pond. The Totladoh colony was established in Maharashtra purely for the duration of the dam construction, but the former labourers continue to reside illegally inside the National Park. Instead of the usual system, where fishermen pay a royalty of Rs 12 (35 UScents) directly to the MPFDC, a network of traders set up a system where they pay the royalty and pay the fishermen Rs 10 (28 UScents) and supply them with boats and nets. The traders then sell the fish at a market value of around Rs 50 (US$1.43) per kg. At the peak of illegal fishing in 1994, the annual recorded catch was 700 tonnes of fish which represents US$240,000 in royalties and a market value of US$1 million, but Forest Department staff believe this was only half of the total catch and that the profit from unrecorded catches were split between politicians, administrators and the local police. The Mafia have offered everyone with access to a vehicle large sums of money to transport the illegally caught fish. Even the former Park Director was offered US$20,000 if he would co-operate, but he refused. |
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