Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, on Monday, instructed all departments, including MSEDCL, Police, Revenue, Forest etc., to come forward and work together for tiger conservation in the State. “Co-ordination of all departments is needed for tiger conservation in the State. The district-level Tiger Room which was constituted under the presidentship of Commissioner of Police should conduct regular meetings for better co-ordination,” said Uddhav Thackeray during an on-line meeting conducted by Forest Department, on Monday. Aditya Thackeray, Environment Minister; Debashish Chakrabarty, Chief Secretary; Vikas Kharge, Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister; Sanjay Pandey, DGP; Jeet Singh, PCCF (P&M); Sunil Limaye, PCCF (Wildlife); Prajakta Lawangare, Divisional Commissioner, Nagpur; Sanjay Meena, Collector, Gadchiroli; Ajay Gulhane, Collector, Chandrapur; Virendra Tiwari, APCCF; Jitendra Ramgaonkar, Field Director, TATR; Bandu Dhotre, Member, State Wildlife Board; Anish Andheria and other officers also attended the meeting on-line. “Proper planning and its implementation for tiger conservation as per the available forest area is needed. The departments including police must put efforts to spread awareness about tiger conservation among locals. Police should sensitise people about tiger poaching and other wildlife crime in forest areas.

 

Police and Forest departments should conduct joint patrolling inside forest area to curb forest crime in the State,” the Chief Minister added. Thackeray instructed Environment Minister to prepare an administrative plan of newly-notified reserve forests and also monitor the status of green cover in such reserve areas. He also instructed him to increase green cover to attract wild animals. The Minister of Forest, informed the meeting that the ministry has already issued a notification of 8 newly-announced reserve forests and notification for the remaining two will release soon. There are total 71 reserve forests have been notified so far in the State.

 

As per the census conducted by Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, there are total 312 tigers dwelling in six tiger reserves of the State. Among which, 200 tigers are there in Chandrapur district it self. Due to increasing number of tigers in Chandrapur district the cases of man-animal conflict has increased drastically. During the meeting, the Chief Minister gave the green signal to implementation of all mitigation measures that proposed by expert committee formed by him last year to reduce tiger-human conflict in Chandrapur district.