A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi undertook a safari at the Kaziranga National Park, the Assam Cabinet on March 10 decided to de-notify another prime one-horned rhino habitat – the Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary about 48km east of Guwahati.
Environment activists said the decision, taken 26 years after the Assam Forest Department notified Pobitora as a wildlife sanctuary on March 17, 1998, is the first of its kind for any protected area in the country.
The Assam government followed it up with a petition in the Supreme Court on March 12 seeking relief from demarcating the boundary of the 38.8sqkm sanctuary, removing encroachments and illegal activities within, and declaring an eco-sensitive zone around it.
Confirming the development, a senior forest officer said the Cabinet headed by Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma took the decision as the 1998 notification was made without placing the matter before the Cabinet and the Chief Minister then.
The minutes of the meeting, attached with the petition before the Supreme Court said the Forest Department has no jurisdiction over the government-owned khas (fallow) land which was included in the Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary.
“The rights of the affected people were not fully settled, especially people residing in the area prior to the issuance of the notification of the Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary in 1998, including people belonging to deprived and marginalised sections of the society such as SC, ST, OBC, etc.,” the minutes read.
The Cabinet note cited periodic patta (deed) land of three villages – Thengabhanga, No. 1 Murkata, and Raja Mayong – where people belonging to backward and marginalised communities were residing even before Independence.
At the same time, the Cabinet observed that “it is important to declare Pobitora as a wildlife sanctuary in view of the large number of rhino population that it houses along with substantial population of other wildlife such as wild buffaloes, leopards, wild boars, barking deer, etc., which need protection”.
Mini Kaziranga
Often referred to as ‘Mini Kaziranga’ owing to the similarity of landscape, floral, and faunal distribution, Pobitora’s rhino population was pegged at 107 after the last census in 2022. The sanctuary has the highest concentration of the one-horned rhinos on earth.
Underlining the need to treat the fringe villagers of the sanctuary as active partners in the wildlife conservation process, the Cabinet further decided to form a five-member committee headed by the Special Chief Secretary (Forest) to examine the pros and cons of the decision to de-notify Pobitora. The panel has been asked to submit its report within six months.
“A State government declaring its own gazette notification irregular after 26 years and resolving to de-notify Pobitora as a wildlife sanctuary is unprecedented. This is disturbing since the Supreme Court in February was surprised at the Assam government’s inability to demarcate the boundary of the sanctuary in more than 25 years,” a leading conservationist said, declining to be quoted.
The top court made this observation while hearing a petition contending that the boundary of Pobitora, notified in 1998 under the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972 was yet to be demarcated and the control of a part of the sanctuary comprising khas land was yet to be handed over to the Forest Department by the Morigaon district administration.
The proposal for the de-notification of any sanctuary or national park requires the recommendation of the National Board for Wildlife followed by the Supreme Court’s approval, activists said.
