Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Difference between Conservation Reserves and Community Reserves
Mains level: Wildlife conservation and various policy efforts
The Maharashtra state forest department on declared 29.53 sq. km area of Dodamarg forest range in Sindhudurg district as ‘Tillari Conservation Reserve’.
Note the differences between Conservation Reserves and Community Reserves. Their shuffled meanings can be asked directly in statements based MCQs.
Tillari Conservation Reserve
- This area is known to serve as a corridor and even as a habitat for the population of tigers and elephants moving between the three states of Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra.
- The 38-km-long Dodamarg wildlife corridor that connects Radhanagari Wildlife Sanctuary in Maharashtra to Bhimgad Wildlife Sanctuary in Karnataka frequently witnesses elephant and tiger movement.
- Tillari will be the seventh corridor in the state to be declared as a ‘conservation reserve’.
What are Conservation Reserves?
- They denote protected areas which typically act as buffer zones to or connectors and migration corridors between established national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and reserved and protected forests.
- Such areas are designated if they are uninhabited and completely owned by the Government of India but used for subsistence by communities if part of the lands is privately owned.
- Administration of such reserves would be through local people and local agencies like the gram panchayat, as in the case of communal forests.
What are Community Reserves?
- They are the first instances of private land being accorded protection under the legislature.
- It opens up the possibility of communally owned for-profit wildlife resorts, and also causes privately held areas under non-profit organizations like land trusts to be given protection.
- These protected area categories were first introduced in the Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Act of 2002 − the amendment to the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.
- These categories were added because of reduced protection in and around existing or proposed protected areas due to private ownership of land, and land use.
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