DAILY NEWS ANALYSIS

Syllabus subtopic: Conservation, Environmental Pollution and Degradation, Environmental Impact Assessment.

Prelims and Mains focus: about Olive Ridley Turtles and steps taken for their conservation; about IUCN

News: Preparations are almost done at the Rushikulya rookery on the Odisha coast to welcome and protect Olive ridley turtles during mass nesting. Odisha has half of the world’s Olive Ridley turtle population and 90% of India’s turtle population lives in the state.

Steps taken by the state government

• To provide security to mother turtles as well as the eggs from human and predator intervention, the forest department is erecting an over 5-km-long fence of metal net from Gokharkuda to Bateswar. This stretch is the most preferred location for mass nesting in the Rushikulya rookery.

• The forest officials have already completed two to three rounds of awareness drive at all villages near the rookery.

• Fishing in mechanised boats, including trawlers, has been banned. The forest department officials are also patrolling the region in two trawlers, two speed boats and a country boat.

• Debris and plastic waste, like pieces of fishing net, are being removed with the help of locals. There will be regular monitoring of the beach.

• The department has set up 11 onshore camps. Personnel at these camps regularly document beach condition, inform about the debris deposited by the sea, prevent entry of predators like stray dogs and search for turtle carcasses.

About Olive Ridley Turtles

• There are five species of turtles in Indian waters — Leatherback (Vulnerable), Loggerhead (Endangered), Hawksbill (Critically Endangered), Green (Endangered) and Olive Ridley.

• In India, sea turtles are protected under the Indian Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.

• The Olive ridley turtles are the smallest and most abundant of all sea turtles found in the world, inhabiting warm waters of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans.

• The Olive ridley is the most numerous among the sea turtles found in India and is well known for its arribadas, or annual mass nestings when thousands of turtles migrate to the breeding ground to nest simultaneously.

• Recognized as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red list of Threatened Species.

• International trade in these turtles and their products is banned under CITES Appendix I.

• ‘Operation Kachhapa’: Conservation of the Olive Ridley Sea Turtle was launched by the Wildlife Protection Society of India in collaboration with the Orissa State Forest Department and the Wildlife Society of Orissa and other local NGOs.

• To reduce accidental killing in India, the Orissa government has made it mandatory for trawls to use Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs), a net specially designed with an exit cover which allows the turtles to escape while retaining the catch.

Syllabus subtopic: Conservation, Environmental Pollution and Degradation, Environmental Impact Assessment.

Prelims and Mains focus: about MM wildlife sanctuary and the tiger reserves mentioned; about NTCA

News: Decks have been cleared to notify the Malai Mahadeshwara Wildlife Sanctuary in Karnataka’s Chamarajanagar district as a tiger reserve. The approval from the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) is expected any time now.

Background

State Board for Wildlife had given its concurrence to declare M.M. Hills sanctuary as a tiger reserve in January 2019. A proposal was submitted in May 2019 but it was returned as additional clarification was required with respect to the delineation of the boundary in the core area, list of existing settlements and the need to spell out the religious and tourism zone, etc. Hence, a revised proposal was submitted in January 2020 and a presentation made before the NTCA in Delhi.

What does it signify?

• Once notified, Chamarajanagar district will have the rare distinction in the country of harbouring three tiger reserves. It already has Bandipur and Biligiri Ranganatha Temple (BRT) Tiger Reserve within its territorial limits.

• Also, with this, Karnataka will have six tiger reserves, the others being Nagarahole, Bhadra, and Anshi-Dandeli, apart from Bandipur and BRT Tiger Reserves.

What’s next?

• The sanctuary will be renamed as Malai Mahadeshwara Hill Tiger Reserve (MMH TR) with a core area of 670.95 sq km spread across Malai Mahadeshwara Reserve Forest, Hanur Reserve Forest and Yediyarahalli Reserve Forest. The buffer will be spread over 235.19 sq km.

About MM Wildlife Sanctuary

• The sanctuary presently has about 20 tigers as evident in photographs from camera traps in Hanur, Ramapura, P.G. Palya, Hoogyam, M.M. Hills and Palar ranges, and wildlife experts vouch for its potential to rival the Bandipur-Nagarahole-Wayanad-Mudumalai landscape in the years ahead.

• This optimism stems from the fact that the MM Hills wildlife sanctuary – which is spread over 906.18 sq km – is contiguous to BRT Tiger Reserve (584 sq km) on one side, Satyamangalam Tiger Reserve (1,412 sq km) in Tamil Nadu on the other, while the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary (1,027 sq km) also borders it, thus providing a contiguous forest cover of over 3,500 sq km that can act as a sink to absorb surplus tiger population and help increase their numbers.

• Implementation of strict wildlife management and protection measures will enhance the landscape value in increasing the tiger densities as the forests has an abundance of prey species like gaur, sambar, chital, four-horned antelope, wild boar, etc., according to authorities who say that studies have proved that the prey density was 5.05 animals per sq km. Being part of Mysore Elephant Reserve, these forests also support nearly 300 elephants.

• There are 39 anti-poaching camps in MM Hills Wildlife Sanctuary and the plan is to double their number once it is elevated to the status of a tiger reserve. This sanctuary and the adjoining landscape – which was once Veerappan’s den and out of bounds for the forest department – had a history of poaching by local community for meat, especially along the forest boundary and fringes. But it has been curtailed over the years thus increasing the density of the prey.

• In the justification to declare the sanctuary a tiger reserve, the authorities have stated that this is a unique geographical zone that acts as a bridge between the Western and Eastern Ghats. There are about 285 bird species documented in this landscape as per a 2014 survey. The forests are important not only for tiger, elephants and leopards but also chitals, honey badgers, smooth-coated otter, striped hyena, wild dogs, sloth bear, grizzled giant squirrels, Mahseer fish, etc.