The government today admitted that it has received reports of illegal trade of body parts of tigers and leopards in various parts of the country including Western Ghats.
"Reports of cases of illegal trade of body parts of tigers and leopards in various parts of the country including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Western Ghats have been received by the Ministry," Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar informed the Rajya Sabha.
The minister, however, maintained that there have been no reports of "rampant" illegal trading of body parts of tigers and leopards.
In 2014, a total of 12 cases of seizure of tiger skins and bones were reported while the number of such cases were five in 2013, he said, adding, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has issued Standard Operation Procedures (SoP) for disposal of carcass of big cats and their seized body parts.
Replying to another question, Javadekar said that the estimated population in 2014 of tiger was between 1945-2491 while that of elephants were 29,391-30,711 (2012). Similarly for lions, it was 411 (2010) and 2810 (2013) for rhinoceros.
In response to another question, he dismissed the news item about 15 tigers and their cubs' disappearance from Ranthambore Tiger reserve as "factually incorrect" and said that the reserve is operating at its carrying capacity level because of which old weak and injured and sub-adult tigers as natural process are pushed out of the reserve and are forced to disperse in adjoining forest areas of Karauli, Bundi, Kota, Bharatpur and Kino Palpur in Madhya Pradesh.
"Thus non-detection of a tiger does not imply that it has gone missing. An enquiry was not deemed fit for a natural process like this. Instead monitoring of such dispersing tigers has been intensified by deploying a team and laying camera traps," he said.
Javadekar said that as per recent country level tiger estimation, the total adult population of tigers is estimated to be 37 (32-42) in Ranthambhore Tiger reserve.
Replying to another question, he said that at present there is no plan of government to protect the forest using modern technology like aero planes, helicopters. However use of information and communication and global positioning system is already practised by many states.
