Decision came after a petition challenged an Uttarakhand govt proposal for tiger safari, which would involve keeping animals in cages within the national park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New Delhi:<\/strong> The Supreme Court on Thursday told the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) that its plan to have a tiger safari on the lines of a zoo within a national park, as envisaged at the Jim Corbett national park, cannot be permitted as the approach has to be \u201canimal-centric\u201d and not \u201ctourism-centric\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A bench headed by justice BR Gavai said, \u201cWe will not permit animals in the zoo to be kept (in cages) at national parks,\u201d while commenting on the 2019 NTCA guidelines to establish tiger safari in buffer and fringe areas of tiger reserves. The guidelines provided for establishing tiger safari in buffer and fringe areas of tiger reserves to reduce pressure of tourism from core or critical tiger habitat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The issue came to Court after a petition filed by environment activist and lawyer Gaurav Bansal challenged the Uttarakhand government\u2019s proposal to have a tiger safari, meant as a specialised zoo with caged animals, at the Jim Corbett national park. The Court appointed advocate K Parmeshwar as amicus curiae to understand if such a facility could be introduced within a national park or sanctuary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bench, also comprising justices PK Mishra and Sandeep Mehta said, \u201cThe purpose should not be entertainment. Your (NTCA) approach has to be animal-centric and not tourism-centric,\u201d as it questioned NTCA for changing the regime in 2019 while its earlier guidelines of 2016 did not provide for safari. The Court will continue hearing the matter on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Additional solicitor general (ASG) Aishwarya Bhati appearing for the NTCA told the Court that the idea of tourism is not opposed to conservation as there are tiger safaris located at buffer or fringe areas of national parks in the country. She pointed out that the 2019 guidelines sought to create an \u201cexalted zoo\u201d as there are 20 such zoos existing in the country, citing the example of Bannerghatta biological park in Bengaluru.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bench remarked, \u201cIf you want to have a zoo, have it in the Lutyens Zone in the Capital but why have it in Corbett national park. Don\u2019t have zoos in these locations. Such facilities may fall in the tiger or elephant corridor, hindering free movement of animals in the wild. It may even cause diseases to other animals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Court said, \u201cYour 2019 guideline has to go. How do you equate zoo with safari.\u201d The judges shared experiences during their visits to some of the sanctuaries and national parks where they were told that tigers in the wild rub their nails against trees considered to have antibiotic value. \u201cAnimals in the zoo won\u2019t know that,\u201d the judges commented, while further observing how wild animals collect salt from rocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou can\u2019t create a facility in a sanctuary for animals born in a zoo. We appreciate if you want to have a relief and rehabilitation centre within the national park for keeping injured or old wild animals and later releasing them into wild,\u201d the bench said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Decision came after a petition challenged an Uttarakhand govt proposal for tiger safari, which would involve keeping animals in cages within the national park. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday told the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) that its plan to have a tiger safari on the lines of a zoo within a national…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paribeshprahari.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paribeshprahari.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paribeshprahari.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paribeshprahari.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paribeshprahari.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.paribeshprahari.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.paribeshprahari.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paribeshprahari.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paribeshprahari.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paribeshprahari.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paribeshprahari.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}