Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination

Topic: Panna Tiger Reserve & UNESCO

Why in News?

• Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR) in Madhya Pradesh (MP) is included in the global network of biosphere reserves by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

About Panna Tiger Reserve

• The Panna ‘National Park’ was initially set up in 1981. It only received the status of a tiger reserve in the early 1990s under “Project Tiger.”
• Once it had been converted into a tiger reserve, the population of tigers started to bloom.
• Panna Tiger Reserve spans 576 kilometers in Panna and Chhatarpur districts of Madhya Pradesh.
• The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) declared Panna Tiger Reserve as a Biosphere Reserve in 2011.
• The thick deciduous forest of the Panna National Reserve is the natural habitat of sloth, Indian wolf, Bear Pangolin, Leopard, Gharial, Indian fox and a lot more. While visiting the park, tourists also get to witness stone carvings that date back to the Neolithic era.
• Report by the All India Tiger Estimation made Madhya Pradesh the state with the highest number of tigers.
• The state had a total of 526 big cats according to 2018 census. After Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttarakhand have the highest number of tigers.

From Zero to 54

• By the early 2000s, the biosphere reserve managed to nurture and grow 40 tigers.
• As a result of the 2009 crisis, the Madhya Pradesh government then set up a committee to investigate the matter and recommended transferring every forest official at the reserve.
• However, in a drastic change of events, the tiger population suddenly started to dwindle with hunters and poachers scouring the grounds.
• In 2009, Panna Tiger Reserve sent shockwaves across the country when it revealed that there were no tigers left within its territory — only two tigresses.
• Within a year, the first litter of cubs was born in Panna Tiger Reserve after they translocated both tiger and tigress from a national park.
• Ten years down the line, the Panna Tiger Reserve is home to 54 tigers.

UNESCO on Panna Biosphere Reserve

• UNESCO's recognition mentioned Panna Tiger Reserve as a critical tiger habitat.
• It stated that the area has undergone substantial ecosystem restoration in the buffer zone.
• With only three urban centres and over 300 villages, agriculture is the main source of income here, together with horticulture, forestry and cultural and eco-tourism.

Biosphere Reserves

• According to the United Nations (UN), a biosphere reserve is where the international agency tries to reconcile the differences between human activity and the preservation of biodiversity.
• Every year UNESCO designates new Biosphere reserves and remove others to promote the conservation of biodiversity and resolve mananimal conflict at that site and enable sustainable use of natural resources.
• There are currently 701 biosphere reserves across the world, located in 124 countries, which form the World Network of Biosphere Reserves.