Government: Will help non-tiger nations

Two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi stressed on “collaboration between the governments at the highest level across the world”, the environment ministry on Thursday expressed its readiness to help non-tiger countries with re-introduction and conservation of the animal through cooperation “in all aspects”, including lending the big cats for breeding.

Addressing the concluding session of third Asia Ministerial Conference on tiger conservation, environment minister Prakash Javadekar said, “India is willing to cooperate with any country which does not have or has lost its tiger population in the course of history. India is ready to help non-tiger countries to create tiger habitat, capacity building and training,”

Mr Javadekar was attending the three-day conference where ministers from 13 tiger-range countries and conservationists took stock of tiger conservation programmes and signed the delhi resolution to ensure conservation of tiger in the wild and their habitats.

“This conference has produced a very good resolve among all the 13 countries and it has laid out a clear cut roadmap of how to move ahead,” he said.

“Under the resolution, the countries have resolved to accelerate implementation of tiger recovery programmes through mutual cooperation and evaluation, aligning development and tiger conservation in mutually complementary manner, leveraging funding and technical support, and enhancing importance of tiger habitats,” he added.

Mr Javadekar further said that the salient features of the Resolution is based on three “Rs” — Restoration, Reintroduction and Rehabilitation.