Earthmovers banned in wildlife reserves

[Mrudul Godbole]

Bangalore: The State Forest Department has enforced a ban on the entry of mechanised earthmovers such as bulldozers, excavators and dozer tractors into national parks and wildlife sanctuaries across Karnataka.

Principal Chief Conservator of forests (Wildlife) B.K. Singh told The Hindu that he had issued instructions to the Deputy Conservators of Forest to ensure that heavy machinery did not enter Protected Areas for road and other civil work. “Wherever work needs to be done, it will be done with equipment that produces minimum disturbance. Workers will be supervised by jurisdictional forest officers.”

Welcoming the ban, which has been a longstanding demand among environmental groups, Praveen Bhargav, Managing Trustee of Wildlife First, said it would stop serious damage being caused to wildlife reserves “under the pretext of habitat improvement, water harvesting and such other ill-planned and un-scientific management prescriptions.”

In August 2008, a memorandum submitted to the Forest Department by Wildlife First said that such unnecessary but highly “lucrative” civil works were causing damage to wildlife habitat such as in Bandipur National Park and Tiger Reserve by excavators that cut hundreds of trenches across hill slopes.

“In many cases such works, passed off as “habitat improvement” / “water development”/ “drains and culverts”… are either not expressly approved in management plans or are being sanctioned under a hastily drawn up Annual Plan of Operation (APO) without sufficient technical scrutiny on the ecological necessity of such civil works,” the memorandum had said.

Link - http://www.thehindu.com/2009/11/13/s...1353950400.htm

[Lakshminarayanan Nataraja]

Great news.

All states should emulate this.

The use of equipments like JCB, Bulldozers etc have a major share in prolific spread of weeds like Lantana Camara, Mikenia, Euphroba, Parthenium etc in many forests.

With unemployment prevailing in fringes of our sanctuaries, our huge workforce can judiciously be used for forestry operations like deweeding,silt removal from dams etc..

[Sabyasachi Patra]

It is indeed a good news. I hope that this ban of earthmovers in wildlife reserves is implemented. I have news that it is still being used in Nagarhole.

As far as creation of water harvesting systems are concerned, I agree that in certain reserves, the management goes over board in construction. Any construction should be based on sound ecological principles and not for showcasing success in the short term.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi