6 - Wildlife and Biodiversity Conservation

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Wildlife and biodiversity conservation can be understood as the proactive protection of species and habitats, both wild and cultivated. The central focus of the Wild Life Protection Act (WLPA) introduced in India in 1972 was to provide protection to wildlife and wildlife habitats. This law largely focuses on reducing human use and developmental pressures on areas important for wildlife species. But this law did not aim to conserve biodiversity, a much wider concept than wildlife. India enacted a law to protect biodiversity only in 2002. This was also the year when legal frameworks for wildlife conservation carved out space for greater local community participation. These two changes reflect, to some extent, the evolution of international and domestic discourses on wildlife and biodiversity conservation.

This community-based approach to wildlife conservation soon came under pressure after the enactment of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. After the passing of this law, exclusionary forms of wildlife conservation regained support within the government system and among some organisations working on wildlife conservation. One illustration of this is in the push to create inviolate areas like critical tiger habitats (CTHs) under the WLPA.

Both wildlife and biodiversity conservation laws are land centric in their approach. Marine conservationists have argued that this approach is unfit for the conservation of marine ecosystems that require distinct management strategies. The reliance on WLPA to provide a ‘one size fits all’ model for conservation of different habitats has failed to bring attention to the conservation needs of marine ecosystems. The creation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) has not gained from the lessons of managing terrestrial protected areas (PAs).

In this chapter, we discuss two significant laws related to wildlife and biodiversity conservation in India: the WLPA, 1972, and the Biological Diversity Act (BDA), 2002. Both these laws were enacted at very different points in India's modern environmental history and are designed to respond to different problems. The BDA comes with the stated purpose of conservation but is not limited to wildlife. It seeks to cover all areas that are important for biological diversity. The BDA defines biodiversity as ‘the variability among living organisms from all sources and the ecological complexes of which they are part, and includes diversity within species or between species and of ecosystems’.