Eco-sensitive tag for Kaziranga

Move to regulate activities harmful for park


ROOPAK GOSWAMI


Protection priorities

Guwahati, Mar 11 : The authorities of Kaziranga National Park are now taking the initiative for declaration of the park as an eco-sensitive zone. This will help restrict or prohibit activities which are not conducive for the park in the future. It will also ensure that it does not fall prey to “pressures” like floods, economic activities, climate change, land use change and road development around it.

A park official said the authorities were going ahead with declaring the park as an eco-sensitive zone, which would classify activities into three areas — prohibited, regulated and permissible — to minimise, or preferably eliminate, any negative impact on it and ensure that the park is safe for the future.

Though the ministry had earlier said “lands falling within 10km of boundaries of national parks and sanctuaries should be notified as eco-fragile zones”, it later modified it, saying that the declaration of eco-sensitive zones should be site-specific and relate to regulation rather than prohibition of specific activities.

Assam’s chief wildlife warden Suresh Chand said the eco-sensitive zone will be notified by June. The ministry of environment and forests has already prepared an indicative set of activities under three categories — prohibited, regulated with safeguards and permissible for consideration.

This set of activities, prepared by the Centre for consideration, has placed construction of hotels and resorts in the regulated category. This actually belies concerns raised by many that hotels and resorts around the park will be prohibited. Fencing of premises of hotels and lodges have also been put in the regulated category along with widening of roads.

The Centre has asked the state to convey a strong message to the public that an eco-sensitive zone is not meant to hamper their day-to-day activities but to protect the zone from any negative impact and refine the environment around the area.

“All this propaganda by some people that their businesses will be affected is simply false. What we are saying is that it needs to be regulated with safeguards so that there is no negative impact on the park. We will have to look towards the future of the park and we do not want it to be doomed,” a forest official said.

A joint paper by Unesco — United Nations Foundation on Opportunities and Challenges for Kaziranga National Park over the Next Fifty Years — a few years back had already warned about the future threats. It said the “continued survival of Kaziranga National Park over the next century and consolidation of the conservation successes achieved in the last hundred years will therefore depend to a large extent on what happens beyond the park’s boundaries and also on ensuring that management options elsewhere, in the river and in the surrounding landscape, do not undermine the ecology and integrity of the park.”There is already a directive from the ministry that an inventory of different land use patterns, types of activities and types and number of industries operating near the protected area, be carried out for declaration of an eco-sensitive zone.