“The advisories/guidelines and red alerts on protection and monitoring protocols issued by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), time and again, were not followed in action and spirit. Even newspaper warnings were ignored,” it says. The Indian Express had reported in March this year that there were no tigers left in Panna, which the MP Forest Department denied.

The team said that ‘intelligence-gathering was never important’ for Panna tiger reserve and the failure was from the highest level. For the investigation, field directors between 2002 and 2009 were questioned and MP police poaching records were accessed. For the same period, the report says, “Senior officers of the rank of PCCF and Chief Wildlife Warden and Additional PCCF Wildlife visited the reserve number of times. Nowhere in their tour report has it been mentioned that the reserve was facing problems which could be a cause of disappearance of tiger. The Principal Secretary Forest was least concerned about tigers in the reserve. The entire department in Bhopal was busy corresponding with scientists, individuals, NGOs and even members of the CEC denying facts even without verification.”

“This is a situation much worse than Sariska,” P K Sen, former Director, Project Tiger and a member of the team, told The Indian Express. “In Sariska, the tigers were lost mostly over one year. The Panna crisis is unprecedented as the negligence went on for eight whole years. In 2001, tiger scientist Raghu Chundawat said that a tiger he had collared was suddenly gone. His plea was dismissed by the state. MP has perfected the art of denial. If the state could not handle the reserve, the department should have acknowldeged this. The way forward is simple. Unless you admit there is a problem, you can’t find the solution.”

... contd.