Over 6,000 trees were illegally cut by the Uttarakhand government in the Corbett Tiger Reserve for the Pakhro tiger safari project against the permission of 163, a report by the Forest Survey of India has found, according to The New Indian Express.
Former Forest Minister of Uttarakhand Harak Singh Rawat had laid the foundation stone of the Pakhro tiger safari in December 2020. Rawat had said that during his visit to the Corbett Tiger Reserve in 2019, for the shooting of Discovery Channel’s Man Vs Wild show, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had spoken about developing a safari in the area to enable visitors confirm tiger sightings.
The case of thousands of trees being cut illegally in and around the project areas was flagged by Gaurav Kumar Bansal, an environment activist and lawyer based in Delhi, reported The Hindu. In a complaint to the National Tiger Conservation Authority, Bansal had alleged that several trees were cut in the protected area.
After this, the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Central Zoo Authority asked the Uttarakhand forest department to provide information about the number of trees cut. The authorities also directed the Forest Survey Institute to conduct a survey for illegal felling.
The Forest Survey of India is a central organisation that comes under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and…
