Taking a stern stand against poachers, Maharashtra Government on Tuesday decided that action taken by forest authorities against those caught while hunting down tigers will not be considered a crime.

Talking to reporters here, Forest Minister Patangrao Kadam said if the forest officials fire upon the poachers injuring or killing them, the action will not be considered a crime

Project Tiger is not the great success story that the government would have you believe. India has lost 32 tigers in the last four months with two tigers having being killed last month in Tadoba Tiger Reserve by poachers using iron foot-traps.

Fourteen of these tigers have been lost to poachers till May 2012, minister for environment and forests Jayanthi Natarajan told reporters on the sidelines of the first stocktaking meeting to review the implementation of the Global Tiger Recovery Programme. “The remaining 18 tigers died natural deaths and we are constantly looking into reasons for this,” the minister said.

The tigers of the Tadoba reserve in Vidarbha region, have new owners. They are the tribals who live in the 79 villages just outside the reserve (known as the buffer zone), who have been given a direct economic stake in the well-being of the tigers. “Visitors who wish to see the tigers in the buffer zone have to pay a fee to the village,” said a senior forest official. “And, each party travelling in that area has to hire a guide, who must be a tribal, and pay him Rs200, up from the Rs100 earlier. This gives the tribals a sense of ownership in the wellbeing of the tigers.”

Now metal traps and snares, and not fire arms are latest threats to tigers and wildlife from poachers. The two-day meet of wildlife officials that concluded on Thursday has sounded red alert in all tiger reserves of the country stressing on armed patrolling as the need of the hour.

On the lines of e-monitoring in Corbett, certain tiger reserves as the Sunderbans in West-Bengal have called for installation of similar systems. The meeting also took a review of the status of Phase-4 monitoring that began in November last year.

‘Secrets of Wild India', a three-part series highlighting the diversity of Indian wildlife, recently won the ‘Best Television Series' award at the International Wildlife Film Festival held at Montana in the U.S.A.

The series had to compete with films from across the globe at the prestigious festival. ‘Secrets of Wild India' was commissioned by National Geographic and is currently being shown in India.

Coal mining poses a serious threat to tigers in Chandrapur region of Maharashtra near the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) and must be reined in, says a report by the Fact Finding Mission of Greenpeace India. The mission consisting of wildlife experts Praveen Bhargav and Biswajit Mohanty and environmental lawyer Rahul Choudhary says no new mines should be given forest clearance in the region and further expansion of operational mines in tiger habitat be stopped.

The coal ministry will push for allowing mining in two densely forested coal areas, Mahan and Hasdeo Arand, at a meeting of the group of ministers on the “no-go/go” forest areas for mining.