The Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972 was passed to safeguard plants and animals.

The Director of Wildlife Preservation, as well as assistant directors and other officers reporting to him, are appointed by the federal government. State governments designate a Chief Wildlife Warden (CWLW), who leads the department’s Wildlife Wing and has ultimate administrative supervision over the state’s Protected Areas (PAs).

Features of the act

• Cutting/Uprooting of Designated Plants is Prohibited: It is prohibited to uproot, damage, gather, possess, or sell any specified plant from any forest land or protected region.
  • Exception: If a person or institution is permitted by the central government, the CWLW may provide authorization to uproot or collect a specific plant for the purpose of teaching, scientific study, or preservation in a herbarium.
• Wildlife Sanctuaries and National Parks: The Central Government has the authority to designate any place as a Sanctuary if it has sufficient ecological, faunal, floral, geomorphological, natural, or zoological importance.
  • The government can also designate an area as a National Park, which includes areas within sanctuaries.
  • The national government appoints a Collector to handle the region designated as a Sanctuary.
• Hunting prohibition: The legislation forbids the hunting of any wild animal listed in Schedules I, II, III, and IV.
  • Exception: A wild animal mentioned in these schedules may only be hunted/killed with the approval of the state’s Chief Wildlife Warden (CWLW) if:
    • It poses a threat to human life or property (including standing crops on any land).
    • It is incapacitated or is afflicted with an incurable sickness.
  • Hunted wild animals (other than vermin), animal goods or flesh from a wild animal, and ivory transported into India, as well as a product derived from such ivory, are considered government property.
  • The WPA Act provides for the formation of entities such as the National and State Boards for Wildlife, the Central Zoo Authority, and the National Tiger Conservation Authority.

How it affects forest dwellers

• The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, sought to recognise the land rights of forest dwellers that were historically denied within protected areas and other reserved forests.
• But despite its enactment, the WLPA continued to hold precedence to displace and evict communities on the grounds of encroachment and threat to wildlife.
• The WLPA, since its enactment, has sought to promote the idea of fortress conservation that seeks to promote wildlife tourism by creating a separation of forest spaces without human habitation.
• Rather than integrating conservation and use practices of forest dwellers in wildlife laws, there has been pressure on forest dwelling communities once a protected area is notified to resettle to spaces outside forests.
• The Act has conveniently negated the free prior informed consent of communities during the notification of protected areas and left out many forest dwellers in the lurch for tenure security.
• Forest department authorities’ utilisation of Section 34A of WLPA by to remove so-called ‘encroachment’ has unfavourably affected the lives and livelihoods of the nomadic pastoral communities and forest dwellers across India.
• The application of penal provisions under the WLPA on forest dwellers without actual proof of them being involved in poaching, wildlife trade and smuggling of wildlife skins reveals the colonial roots of this act and a pattern of criminalisation of forest dwellers by bureaucratic powers.
• Many instances of Van Gujjars being classified as ‘poachers’ rests on the perceptions of criminality embedded while determining lives of de-notified nomadic tribes.

Way forward

• We should recognise the value of sustaining the forest and wildlife ecosystem as well as participatory potential of forest dwellers to foster coexistence and develop conservation ethic.
• However concern is about how the word ‘local’ communities within these amendments is used for the clause that allows linear projects for development such as drinking water within protected areas. This clause can be misused since many claims can be made in the name of locals while alienating forest dwellers and their claims to coexistence.
• Cultivating a decentralised models of water conservation by forest dwellers instead of these infrastructure projects that may cause irreparable damage to habitat and deteriorate health of wildlife. Such models of development may become precursors to human-animal conflicts in the region.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/the-lists-of-the-fatf-and-pakistans-position/article65200676.ece

How to structure

1) Give an intro about Wildlife Protection Act

2) Explain the key features

3) Examine how the features of this act is affecting the rights of forest dwellers

4) Suggest measures

5) Conclude