Jaipur: In a recent report released by ministry for environment, forest and climate change which measured the management effectiveness of tiger reserves in India, Sariska reserve has been rated as good compared to its previous rating in 2010-11 while on the other hand, Ranthambore reserve continues to remain at the same grade since the last time i.e. ‘good'.
The report known as ‘Tiger MEETR' measures the reserves on the basis of Management Effectiveness Evaluation (MEE) process.
This process is a global framework to evaluate the performance of protected areas that grades reserves between poor to very good. According to it, poor stands at 40% while very good means 75% and above.
This assessment tool is used to measure the well protected areas like national parks, wildlife sanctuaries etc. It has six parameters – threats, planning, inputs, process, output and outcome in context of the parks.
In the last four years, Sariska National Park has shown significant rise in the ratings. It has improved a lot. Currently, it has 13 tigers.
On the other hand, Ranthambore has not shown much improvement although the number of big cats has constantly multiplied at the reserve. Currently, it possesses, 59 tigers, including sub-adults.
According to Times of India report, a wildlife expert has quoted, “Ranthambore poses many more challenges than Sariska as a park. Not only due to the bustling number of big cats but also because of the straying away of sub-adults due to space crunch. There is an urgent need for creating better corridors in it.”
He further added, “Sariska on the other hand is a bigger forest with much lesser number of tigers but the many villages that are still situated in it and that had resulted in the poaching of a tiger in 2010 are issues that the reserve needs to address urgently."
The report also rated newly created Mukundra Reserve Park as fair. Currently, it does not possess any tiger.
However, unlike all of them Panna National Park has been rated as very good by the report