Overview: Laws for Wildlife Protection in India

[Profile of the author: Abhyudey Kabra is a second-year law student at Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Management Studies, IP University. He is a Criminal law enthusiast, an abstract artist and a voracious reader, training to become a renaissance man.]

INTRODUCTION

More than 99% of all the organisms that ever lived on Earth are extinct. This extinction of species is necessary, but these species are disappearing at an alarming rate. We are living in an age of rapid and unprecedented planetary changes with exploding human population and economic growth driving planetary changes through the increased demand for energy, land and water.

In the last 4.5 billion-year, life on earth has been nearly wiped out five times, every time by a catastrophic event like climate change, volcanoes, intense ice age, and the asteroid impact. These events are known as the big five mass extinction. Though these mass extinctions are deadly events they are a part of the evolutionary life cycle.[1]

Till date, the last five mass extinctions have happened on an average every 100 million years[2]. Each one has lasted between 50,000 years and 2.27 million years. But now the Earth is experiencing a huge episode of global species extinctions, which is having negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilisation. A 2017 study describes this as “biological annihilation”. This rapid planetary change is referred to as the ‘Great Acceleration’. It’s is the first time in earth’s history that a single species - Homo sapiens- is responsible for this mass extinction.[3]

In the last few decades, habitat loss, overexploitation, invasive organisms, pollution, toxification and more recently climate destruction, as well as the interactions among these factors, have led to the catastrophic decline in both the numbers and sizes of populations of both common and rare species. According to research, the current extinction rate could be more than 100 times higher than normal. The accelerated climate change, the abnormal ecological stress, changing atmospheric composition all caused by human exploitation of natural resources, indicates to the sixth mass extinction which the earth is going through.[4]

WHAT ARE MASS EXTINCTIONS?

Mass extinction occurs when the global extinction rate rose significantly above normal or background levels in a geologically short period of time. The normal rate or background rate indicates how fats species are expected to disappear on the absence of human endeavour and this is measured using the fossil record to count the number of species that died out between mass extinction events. In contrast to the big five mass extinction events, today’s species are going extinct due to the direct and indirect human activities.[5]

HOW DOES INDIA PROTECT ITS WILDLIFE?

Biodiversity has been described as the ‘infrastructure’ that supports all life on Earth. Biological diversity generates the natural systems and biochemical cycles which allows the stable functioning of our atmosphere, oceans, waterways, and forests. They are, simply, a prerequisite for our modern, prosperous human society to exist, and to continue to thrive.

India is home to a large number of species of flora and fauna. In order to conserve this wildlife, the government have implemented some of the most stringent legislation.[6]

Some of the initiatives taken by the government are as follows:

i) Project Tiger

An initiative by the government of India, project tiger was launched in 1973. This was a first if it’s a kind project in India to maintain the population of tigers in India and to identify the factors causing a reduction in tiger habitats and to recover the natural ecosystem to the extent possible. Project tiger is an ongoing Centrally Sponsored Scheme of the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change providing central assistance to the tiger states for tiger conversation in designated tiger reserves

ii) Project Elephant

Project elephant was launched by the Government of India in the year 1992 with the following objectives :

iii) Crocodile Conservation project

First crocodile breeding project programme was implemented in Odisha in early 1975. It was undertaken by the government of India in collaborating the United Nations development fund (UNDF) & Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in order to protect the remaining population of crocodiles by establishing sanctuaries for them.

iv) Project Snow leopard

A project snow leopard was launched in 2009 with the aim to conserve this particular species. The government of India launched the national protocol on snow leopard population assessment in 2019, this was an inter-governmental alliance of twelve countries including India, Pakistan, Nepal, Russia, China, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia.

Another initiative launched in the year 2017 named SECURE Himalaya ( Securing livelihoods, conservation, sustainable use and restoration of high range Himalayan ecosystems) was aimed to conserve high altitudes biodiversity.

Furthermore, to protect the wildlife, the Government of India also became a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) since October 1976.[7]

CURRENT LAWS

Our constitution imposes certain duties on the state as well as on the citizens:

Article 48A of Constitution of India bestows the duty upon the state to take steps for the protection of the environment and to safeguard the forests and wildlife of the country.

Article 51A (g) states that it’s is the fundamental duty of every citizen of India to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife, and to have compassion for living creatures.

Certain wildlife protection laws have been enacted with the constitutional provisions as their base.

The Acts which have an important bearing on wildlife enforcement in India include:

• The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972
• The Indian Forest Act, 1927
• The Forest Conservation Act, 1980
• The Biological Diversity Act, 2002
• The Environmental (Protection) Act, 1986
• The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960
• The Criminal Procedure Code, 1973
• The Indian Penal Code, 1860
• The Arms Act, 1959
• The Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992
• The Customs Act, 1962
• The Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, as amended in 2009, hunting of wild animals is an offence under this Act.

Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972

In India, the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 is the umbrella legislation for the protection of wildlife. The act has been amended several times. This act prohibits the poaching, smuggling, hunting, poisoning, illegally trading any wild animal or bird. Some salient features of the act are as follows:

• The act classifies species into “wildlife” and “wild animals”.
• Wild animals are classified into six schedules.
• This act prohibits hunting wild animals [8]
• This act also prescribes the penalties for those contravening any provisions of the act.[9]
• General penalties for violation of the Act can be a minimum of three years of imprisonment extending up to seven years and/or a maximum fine up to twenty-five thousand rupees.
• All offences under this act except those related to teasing zoo animals[10] are non-bailable and cognisable. This implies that a person accused of any offence under this act can be arrested without a warrant and bail will not be granted to him/her as a matter of right.
• Schedule I species can be hunted only in very special conditions, by the authorisation of the Chief Wildlife Warden and only when the species has become a threat to human life or is disabled or diseased beyond recovery.[11]
• Schedule I to IV species can be hunted with permission of the Chief Wildlife Warden or the Authorised Officer if they are a threat to human life or property including standing crops or are disabled beyond recovery.
• Species listed in Schedule I to IV and in Schedule VI are protected, wherever found.
• Wildlife, as defined under this act is protected as the part of the habitat in any Protected Areas.

SCOPE OF IMPROVEMENT

Government of India needs to develop a nationwide policy for containing the trade, enforcement and capacity building of the state forest departments. The resolutions and decisions taken under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) should be implemented more strictly. The government also needs to maintain a central data bank of all the species of animals and birds which should be updated regularly.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Although India has some of the stringent laws regarding wildlife protection it also has some drawbacks. The Bengal tiger and the Indian elephant which are native to the Indian subcontinent are often hunted, killed and traded intercountry. The inadequacy of border control mechanism to check wildlife trafficking have provided a nice opportunity for the poachers to supply tiger parts and elephants tusk, pangolins, etc directly to consumers in China.

The wildlife protection act also fails to comprehensively cover practices that are for the scientific purpose such an as venom extraction form snakes for the production of anti-venom.

Another exploited provision of Wildlife Protection Act, ‘self-defence’ is often easily claimed by the poachers.

CONCLUSION

Keeping in view the increased recent human encroachment, the Indian government needs to take up more conservative programmes. The nature conservation agenda is not only about securing the future of tigers, pandas, whales and all the amazing diversity of life we love and cherish on Earth. It’s bigger than that. There cannot be a healthy, happy and prosperous future for people on a planet with a destabilised climate, depleted oceans and rivers, degraded land and empty forests, all stripped of biodiversity, the web of life that sustains us all.

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[1] Nadia Drake and National Geographic, ‘Will Humans Survive the Sixth Great Extinction’ (23 Jun 2015).

[2]Frederik Saltre & Corey J. A. Bradshaw, The Conversation (18 November 2019).

[3]Gerardo Ceballos, ‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signalled by vertebrate population losses and declines’ ( PNAS July 25, 2017)

[4]WWF. 2018. Living Planet Report - 2018: Aiming Higher. Grooten, M. and Almond, R.E.A.(Eds). WWF, Gland, Switzerland.

[5] Michael Greshko and National Geographic Staff, ‘What are mass extinctions, and what causes them?’ (26 Sept. 2019).

[6] Ranthambore National Park, ‘Wildlife Conservation Initiatives by Indian Government’ ( 25 May, 2017)

[7] CITES objectives, cites.org.

[8] Section 9, The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

[9] Section 51, The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

[10] Section 38J, The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

[11] Section 11 (1) (a), The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.