Centre plans to update Wildlife Protection Act

The Central government has begun a review of the Wildlife Protection Act (WPA), enacted in 1972 and last amended in 2006 under the Congress-led UPA government. The Union environment ministry has constituted a six-member drafting committee to this effect, which has met twice till now, an official from the ministry said on condition of anonymity.

The committee's mandate is to bring the Act in tune with present-day challenges such as human-wildlife conflict, illegal trade of wildlife and forest produce, management of wildlife outside protected areas and population control of certain species. The ministry may also consider revising the provisions of punishment and penalty for wildlife crimes in the Act.

The committee comprises Rajesh Gopal, former director of Project Tiger, BS Bonal, former member secretary of National Tiger Conservation Authority; Ravi Singh, Secretary General and CEO of World Wildlife India and other senior ministry officials. Ministry officials said that they would also take into account earlier draft as the WPA was under review in 2016 as well. It was later put on the back burner.

"The government brought out the National Wildlife Action Plan (NWAP) 2017-31 last year, which has already talked about the current challenges. But, there are certain issues that were not under the purview of WPA. The scope of this review is to bring it up-to-date with today's challenges," said a senior official of the ministry.