The Hindu : Antony urged to intervene to protect forests

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 09, 2004

Kerala

Kerala

Antony urged to intervene to protect forests

By Our Staff Reporter

PALAKKAD, FEB. 8. Leading environmentalists, who had led the `Save Silent Valley' campaign in the late Seventies, have urged the Chief Minister, A.K. Antony, to intervene to protect the fringe areas of the National Park from being encroached upon by private individuals.

The poetess, Sugathakumari, said she was shocked by reports of very sensitive forest tracts like Manthampotty and Kakkivani in the corridor of the Park going into the hands of private individuals because the State Government had lost litigations in Courts. She told The Hindu that yet another battle was needed to save the Silent Valley.

The environmentalists would meet the Chief Minister and the Forest Minister, K. Sudhakaran, to urge them to take urgent steps to save this ecologically fragile land that forms the corridor of the Park.

The former president of the Kerala Shastra Sahithya Parishad, M.K. Prasad, reacting to reports of 140 acres of rainforests being taken over by private individuals in Manthampotty, said: "This is perhaps the umpteenth case of our Government's failure to protect forests. There is no point in approaching the Supreme Court on appeal. The High Court has done nothing wrong. In this case, our Government should have prayed to the Court to condone its failure and request to restore the forest land to the State, considering its ecological importance and peculiar position in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, by paying the cost to the owners, in recognition of the spirit of conservation.

"Whether the said land belongs to the erstwhile owner is not the question. The question now is that a piece of forest in a strategic position, ecologically important and now remaining protected, is being allowed to be destroyed. This is what is to be looked into."

Another leading environmental scientist and former Director of Integrated Rural Technology Centre (IRTC), R.V.G. Menon, in a statement said that: "The news from Manthampotty is most distressing and confirms our worst fears. It is no secret that the State Government has made a habit of losing forest cases. The Ordinance to take over ecologically fragile areas was promulgated by the previous Government as a last ditch effort to retrieve some very sensitive forestlands which had been lost through inexcusable lapses and collusion of some officials with the forest mafia.

"The present Government has erred grievously by allowing that Ordinance to lapse and by watering down the Bill that was supposed to replace it. Even that is not yet in place. Thus about 11,000 acres of prime pristine forest land taken over under the Ordinance in Mannarkkad Forest Division of Palakkad district in the buffer zone of the Silent Valley National Park stand exposed, unprotected and helpless before the ever-threatening axe. These precious forests are sure to be lost irretrievably unless the Government wakes up to the situation and takes urgent, purposeful and forceful measures," Dr. Menon said.

The organising secretary of the Bharathapuzha Protection Committee, P.S. Panicker, said the Government should take immediate steps to see that this precious rainforests is not lost.

He said the controversy over Silent Valley on the construction of a hydel project had ended when it was dedicated to the nation as a National Park by the then Prime Minister, the late Rajiv Gandhi, on September 7, 1985. But now the Park is threatened with its corridor and buffer zone getting axed due to the lack of political will on the part of the Government and the collusion of some forest officials with the encroachers.

He said the Silent Valley received one of the highest rainfall in the country. The Northern portions of the Park received the highest rainfall of about 7,500 mm annually.

Its western slopes received 4,440 mm and the eastern side, 3,200 mm of rainfall. He pointed out that the average annual rainfall in Kerala is only 2,500 mm. But during the last three years it had received only two-thirds of its average annual rainfall. Hence, the destruction of the remaining rainforest of Silent Valley could be disastrous for the State, he said.

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