Guwahati: The famed abode on one-horned Indian rhino and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Kaziranga National Park in Assam has faced tough challenge to keep rampaging rhino poachers under check basically because of growing number of settlements suspected illegal migrants from Bangladesh around the Park’s core area.

The poachers have been virtually on rampage in the Park since the beginning of this year killing nine precious rhinos so far in the Park, according to official figures.

Two public interest litigation petitions have been filed in the Madras High Court Bench here — one challenging a notification issued by the Centre on October 15, laying down guidelines for tourism

With animals in the Bandipur National Park (BNP) facing hardship due to acute scarcity of water, triggered by a bad drought, the Forest department has started supplying water to the partially dried-up water bodies inside the BNP.

Wild animals, particularly elephant, tiger, deer and bison, are struggling to slake their thirst as there is water only in 15 of the 282 tanks/lakes inside the Bandipur National Park. Acute water shortage has forced several animals to migrate to the backwaters. But, even that region is facing water crisis.

It was Jaipur, late 2007. A few months before the PMO cleared the plan to fly in tigers to Sariska from Ranthambhore, an IAS officer was holding forth on the subject at a private function.

As many as five of the 13 tigers lost in the state till Mid-December fell prey to this method of poaching in 2012

Madhya Pradesh is witnessing a rising trend of tigers being poached by electrocution with five cats falling prey to it in 2012-13, an RTI query has found.
"According to government records, 13 tigers lost lives in Madhya Pradesh till mid December 2012, including four due to electrocution," RTI activist Ajay Dube told PTI. However, one of the tigers was not poached, but accidentally came in contact with electric wires.

JAIPUR: The state government on Tuesday announced that all state-run commercial activities in the core areas of reserve forests would be discontinued.

The announcement came during the question hour in the assembly when the opposition strongly protested the running of RTDC's Tiger Den and other lodges in the core area of the reserve forest. With an aggressive opposition cornering the state government over the RTDC run commercial hotels in the core area, incharge minister Parsadilal Meena assured the house: ''RTDC run hotels, if any in the core area, will be shut down.''

Madhya Pradesh forest minister Sartaj Singh has ruled out any new action plan to save tigers from poachers in Katni-Bandhavgarh region till an official probe was completed.

A tiger that has strayed into human habitation must be guided back to forest, chemically immobilised, trapped but, unless it is established as a man-eater, not killed, states a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) framed by the National Tiger Conservation Authority to deal with man-tiger conflict.

The SOP, circulated among chief wildlife wardens last month, states that "under no circumstances must a tiger be eliminated by invoking the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, if it is not habituated for causing human death". And declaring it a man-eater must also be a well-deliberated exercise that differentiates a chance man-killer from a habituated human stalker that feeds on the body and avoids its natural prey, says the SOP.

The ‘regional mafia’ has made Nepal an active transit hub for the illicit trafficking of wildlife parts, according to evidences gleaned from the recent seizures of large amounts of such material by