PILIBHIT: The BJP MP from Pilibhit, Firoz Varun Gandhi, is set to hold a virtual meeting with senior forest officials and the tiger experts of Global Tiger Forum as well as World Wide Fund for Nature (India) on May 2 to discuss the ways of mitigating the tiger straying and the man-tiger conflict in Pilibhit. Talking to TOI over the issue, Gandhi said that the menacing situation had been persisting in his constituency for years and now he wanted a result-oriented action plan to be chalked out and implemented by the forest authorities.
Referring to his formal talks with some wildlife experts, he said that “one of the prime endeavours is to pursue farmers to abandon sugarcane cropping in fields adjacent to the periphery of Pilibhit tiger reserve (PTR) as the female big cats with cubs, prefer to stay in the sugarcane crop to protect their cubs.” For this, an integrated planning would be needed to focus upon the options of remunerative crops, Proper training of farmers with complete know-how about how to grow the new crops will need to be done, Gandhi said. Keshav Agrawal
