Triund is a magnificent, rock-strewn meadow at 3000 meters at the base of the towering Dhauladhar range behind Dharamsala. Till about ten years ago it had only one three room forest rest house and was visited by about a dozen trekkers everyday. You could spend the night there only if you had a permit for the rest house, which has neither electricity nor running water. Today it is visited by a thousand people a day, there are dozens of semi-permanent structures and tents despoiling the place. Dozens stay for the night in them, defecating wherever they fancy, the meadow is strewn with garbage, faeces and plastic. Last year a local environmental NGO had cleaned up the place and had carted more than 30 large bags of garbage and trash down the mountain. If this makes you angry, here is something that will make you furious: the entire area is a Reserved forest and no non forest activity is permitted there by law. People have now even started getting plots entered in their names, in connivance with the Revenue officials. Every structure and tent is an encroachment. The Forest department is aware of what is going on but chooses to remain in deep slumber. What the hell is the HP Forest department doing? you may well ask.
The HP High Court has posed this precise question to the department this week and has asked the Deputy Commissioner to remove all the polluting eye-sores within three months. But why does it have to take the judiciary to remind the Forest department that it is its bounden responsibility to implement the Forest Conservation Act, the Indian Forest Act and the Godavarman judgement (1997) of the Supreme Court? Triund is just one example of how the apathy, irresponsibility and downright connivance of the department is devastating the natural environment of the state, whether it is the Rohtang slopes, Hatu peak in Shimla, Manimahesh in Chamba, Chandertal in Lahaul, Kheer Ganga in the Parvati valley or Choordhar peak. I was horrified to learn the other day that 100 vehicles are allowed upto Jabri ( on the trek to Hampta pass) EVERY DAY! Dozens of people camp at the pass itself. I had been to the pass some years ago and can vouch for the fact that it cannot sustain more than ten people at a time. And this is part of the Inder Killa national park- how are people allowed in without permission, and with no rules to govern their stay there?
The explosion of trekking in forest areas and fragile mountains is getting completely out of hand and in the days to come shall pose the biggest danger to the natural environment, including its flora and fauna. But the department tasked with protecting these areas is in deep slumber, worried only about how many more posts of PCCFs and CCFs it can wrest from an equally somnolent government. I have been arguing for years that the carrying capacity of these natural spots/ routes should be determined, a system of permits introduced and rigorously implemented, camping sites developed with pit toilets and running water, vehicular traffic completely banned from these areas to preserve their pristine character, violators severely fined. HP's forest department, however, is sleeping the sleep of Kumbhakaran, and by the time it wakes up there will be nothing left to preserve.
Thankfully, the higher judiciary shares these concerns. There is a path breaking, but little noticed, judgement of the Uttarakhand High Court of 21.8.2018 which is of relevance to Himachal also, though I doubt if the mandarins of our Forest department are aware of it. In Writ Petition( PIL) 123 of 2014, Justices Rajiv Sharma and Lok Pal Singh addressed head on the environmental destruction caused by uncontrolled camping on the alpine meadows ( Bugyals in local parlance) of Roop Kund in Chamoli district. After discussing at length various authoritative environmental studies and judgements of various courts, they passed the following orders, inter-alia:
* A complete ban on overnight stay/ camping in the meadows.
* Removal of all permanent/ semi permanent structures ( of the UK Tourism Board) from the meadows.
* Restrict the number of tourists to the Bugyals to 200 per day.
* Dismantle all encroachments( by tourist/ trekking organisers) within three months.
* Clear all the accumulated garbage in the meadows within 6 weeks.
I am not aware whether the Uttarakhand govt. has appealed against this order or not. The judgement may be a bit harsh( especially the ban on overnight stay) but it's the only way to go, at least for the time being, till the government introduces proper safeguards and systems to regulate and restrict the ever increasing numbers to the carrying capacity of a place. The HP forest department can do far worse than adopt these prescriptions, and use them to develop its own template for a sustainable policy on eco-tourism.
I tremble every time I read that the Himachal govt. is opening up some new, virgin, natural destination for eco-tourism or trekking or adventure sports. This is tantamount to signing the death warrant of that place in terms of preserving its environmental heritage and values.
We have a robust government now, a tougher leader and can surely hope to become the regional bully No 2 over the next five years. The environment, forests, wildlife etc. were non-issues in the 2019 election and quite expectedly we are saddled again with a spectacular non-performer in the experienced personage of the present incumbent.
ReplyDeleteForests, however, are a state subject except when and where corporate-cum-political interests and greed are involved, as in clearances under the FCA. When we say ‘STATE SUBJECT’ we are, in terms of approach, thinking, political management, bribe led enforcement or connivance and so forth, unable or unwilling to squarely confront the reality that it is the Politician (at all levels) who is really running the administration. The officers and other babudom are largely ‘ways & means’ to do the Master’s bidding and therefore keep changing or hanging on as governments go about muddling over their 5 year terms.
Forest management in HP is governed by outdated rules, regulations and procedures which are mired in Kafkaesque bureaucracy. Strangely, unlike in the Police no one has heard of ‘modernisation’ in forestry? The department is fighting a losing battle armed with 19th Century wherewithal, mind-set, rigid structures and training. It is in this context that the non-performance of the forest (or any other department) needs to be understood.
The Triund example, as an example of numerous other politically managed (and botched up) cases, when seen in the context of our political backdrop is not so much a case of sheer departmental negligence (some is wilful) as it is of not naming and shaming (would taming be thinkable?) the political drivers behind the appropriation of Nature. The biggest and rapidly growing aspect of such appropriation being widespread, unchecked and wanton encroachment of forest lands in Himachal Pradesh. If we realize that land, any land, in touristy places is REAL estate, one can see how helpless a forlorn forest guard can be. The forest department does not even know whether their forests (including protected and demarcated ones) figure in the Revenue record!
The Courts and the NGT, have been making sporadic noises (getting feebler by the day) about non implementation or garbling of forest and wildlife laws, but the political drivers behind such mismanagement have had the upper hand always. This weakens implementation especially of laws and policies where political interests are stepped on. And because politicians are running the day to day show, it means nearly everything.
Sir,
ReplyDeletePolitical interference in posting of field staff, the departmental inertia to modernize and reorganize itself, the unwillingness to provide better infrastructure to Forest staff, officers running after postings of their own choice and the sheer absence of "guts", I guess is the basic problem. This basic problem has manifested into a variety of symptoms and issues in forestry and wildlife management in Himachal - some visible and most invisible. Himachal needs to learn many lessons from several other state forest departments. Hope things turn better somewhere in the 'near' future....
The inertia to change is immense, political interference is rampant, technical forestry has sublimated, the pressures on all meadows, water sources and forests is much beyond carrying capacity and the worst is the complete spineless sedated existence of the Officers.
ReplyDeleteIt has happened just in about two decades and the scale and speed is cascading.
How low can it get and how fast is the only question of interest alive in HP forestry.
After reorganization and creation of new PA's nothing has happened in the ground specially in case of newly created /notified PA's. Most of the areas are still with Territorial Divisions. The areas like Triyund, Hamta, Kheerganga are over exploited by the uncontrolled visitors. No independent staff has been deployed in these newly created PA's. The scarcity of field staff in the wildlife wing is the very old practice. Field tours by officers is very limited.
ReplyDeleteMr. Rana is bang on target. It's a scandal that even ten years after the creation of the new PAs ( Kheerganga and Inderkilla) they continue to be with the territorial divisions and without the dedicated staff required to mange them properly. The priorities of territorial units are totally different from that of Wildlife. I wonder why the PCCF ( Wildlife) is allowing this to continue. In fact the National Board for Wildlife in the union Ministry should be taking note of this deficiency and pulling up the state Forest department, but I guess it is too busy clearing projects in wildlife areas to have time for this! This is total bureaucratic apathy at its worst and is something we cannot blame the politicians for, which is the usual alibi when we fail to do our job.
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ReplyDeleteTeach others about the importance of the enviornment and how they can help save rainforests.
-restore damage ecosystems by new planting trees an land where forests have been cut down.
-support the needy peoples by T. D.
-ban the import of illegally timber.
- protect more ancient forest by forest field guard.
- main deforestation caused is poor forest management and unsustainable fuelwood collection degrade forests and often instigate a death by a thousand cuts form of deforestation.
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