New Delhi: The Central Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court has recommended that the protected areas of Goa that are directly contiguous with the core of the Kali Tiger Reserve and have relatively few households, like the Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary and Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary, should be considered for inclusion in the first phase of the proposed Goa Tiger Reserve.
The committee has also recommended to the Apex Court that protected areas with significantly higher numbers of households, such as the Southern Part of Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary and Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary, should not be included in the first phase of the Goa Tiger Reserve.
The report was submitted after two members of the Supreme Court-appointed panel — Chandra Prakash Goyal and Sunil Limaye — met all the stakeholders, including NGO Goa Foundation, which had filed a public interest litigation before the High Court, mandating that the state government declare the area as a tiger reserve.
The High Court had ordered the Goa government to declare part of its wildlife sanctuaries as a tiger reserve. The order was challenged by the Goa government before the Supreme Court.
The CEC, in its report submitted before the Supreme Court on November 21, 2025, has said that the protected areas of Goa that are directly contiguous with the core of the Kali Tiger Reserve (Karnataka) and have relatively few households — namely Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary (50 households) and Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary (41 households) — should be considered for inclusion in the first phase of the proposed Goa Tiger Reserve.
Their ecological adjacency to the Kali core makes them vital for ensuring landscape-level connectivity and enabling natural dispersal of tigers into Goa, and hence these two shall form part of the core of the proposed Goa Tiger Reserve.
The CEC has said that the protected areas contiguous with the buffer of the Kali Tiger Reserve and having minimal human habitation — namely the northern part of Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary (9 households) and Bhagwan Mahavir National Park (2 households) — constitute the most feasible and socially least disruptive components for notification as the buffer of the proposed Goa Tiger Reserve in the first phase.
The committee has said that the total area proposed for notification as the Goa Tiger Reserve is 468.60 sq. km.
This area is fully contiguous with the 1,345 sq. km core and buffer of the Kali Tiger Reserve, and together they form an integrated protected landscape of approximately 1,814 sq. km.
The CEC has said that this contiguity is expected to significantly strengthen landscape-level connectivity and ecological functionality.
The committee has said that the integration of the proposed Goa Tiger Reserve with this large and established conservation complex will facilitate unhindered tiger movement, ensure genetic and demographic continuity, and support natural dispersal from the source population in Kali.
Collectively, the combined core and buffer systems of both reserves will constitute a unified transboundary conservation unit capable of sustaining long-term tiger population recovery and enhancing the overall resilience of the Western Ghats tiger metapopulation.
The CEC has said that the protected areas with significantly higher numbers of households — such as the southern part of Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary (approximately 560 households) and Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary (approximately 612 households) — shall not be included in the first phase of the Goa Tiger Reserve.
These areas would require extensive community consultations, sustained awareness-building, and confidence-generation measures before any decision regarding their inclusion can be taken.
The CEC has said that their incorporation, if found appropriate, may be examined in a second phase after securing local support and adequately addressing livelihood and rehabilitation concerns.
The report mentions that in view of the public apprehension regarding displacement and land acquisition, the state government shall undertake structured and sustained awareness programmes to clearly communicate that the declaration of a tiger reserve does not entail compulsory relocation of villages from buffer areas nor the automatic acquisition of private land.
Setting a deadline for the state, the CEC has said that the government shall initiate the process of notification of the proposed Goa Tiger Reserve, as indicated above, within the next three months.
The state government shall prepare a Tiger Conservation Plan, as mandated under Section 38V of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, in consultation with NTCA, immediately after the declaration of the Goa Tiger Reserve.
