[1] The Act provides for the protection of wild animals, birds and plants; and for matters connected or incidental thereto.
Animals under Schedule V (e.g. common crows, fruit bats, rats, and mice) are legally considered vermin and may be hunted freely.
The "Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972" was enacted by the Parliament of India in order to conserve animals, birds, plants connected therewith in 1972.
For offences relating to wild animals (or their parts and products) included in schedule-I or part II of Schedule- II and those relating to hunting or altering the boundaries of a sanctuary or national park the punishment and penalty have been enhanced, the minimum imprisonment prescribed is three years which may extend to seven years, with a minimum fine of Rs.
In order to improve the intelligence gathering in wildlife crime, the existing provision for rewarding the informers has been increased from 20% of the fine and composition money respectively to 50% in each case.
Stringent measures have also been proposed to forfeit the properties of hardcore criminals who have already been convicted in the past for heinous wildlife crimes.
[12] Naturalist Peter Smetacek, member of the Kerala State Board for Wildlife (SBWL), criticised the act and its far-reaching hunting restrictions specifically as oppressive towards the rural population as well as scientists and as ineffective in achieving its goals in conservation (e.g. by creating counterproductive incentives and bringing peasants to set fire to forests in order to limit population growth of nuisance wildlife like wild boar).
[13][14][15][16] Smetacek further characterized the act as coming into existence in the context of the political move against the erstwhile Indian nobility (among whose traditional pastimes was hunting for thousands of years), then Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi's romanticized view of nature, and India's extensive system of licensing and regulation in the 1970s, known as the Licence Raj.