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Plan to create local guides for Harike fails to take off
To make Harike an important tourism destination of Punjab will help the state financially; it will also provide employment opportunities to the local guides.
Bathinda Two years after the Punjab wildlife department mooted a plan to rope in members of the rural community as guides to promote tourism at the Harike Wetland and Bird Sanctuary, the ambitious project has failed to take off.
The then tourism minister Navjot Singh Sidhu had mooted the idea to make Harike an important tourism destination of Punjab, while clubbing a tourist circuit comprising the Golden Temple and the historic Saragarhi Gurdwara in Ferozepur.
Ferozepur divisional forest officer (wildlife) Nalin Yadav said the authorities were unable to find suitable individuals for the task. He said a team of the state wildlife officials was trained in August this year as master trainers by professionals from Karnataka, but things did not proceed further.
“A person with some basic understanding of details, including the scientific names of flora and fauna, can deliver to visiting birdwatchers. The department is ready for capacity building, but no youth in or around Harike has been found suitable for the job,” Yadav added
Spread over 4,100 hectare on the Ferozepur-Tarn Taran border, Harike is a rare biodiversity hot-spot in Punjab that attracts thousands of birds from abroad and other Indian states. The wetland is located where Sutlej and Beas rivers merge, with the sanctuary at the spot where Majha, Malwa and Doaba regions of Punjab meet.
Sources said as it attracts birdwatchers every year, an organised group of well-trained guides might help in improving the economics of the local area and ensure better protection of the area.
“Harike has immense scope for ecotourism, but it lacks promotion plans. In June 2018, then tourism minister Sidhu (now Punjab Congress president) had drawn up a blueprint to tap tourism potential at the underdeveloped site. It was proposed that Harike would be taken as a link between the adjoining major religious site of Amritsar with the international border and historic spots in Ferozepur. The proposal, however, did not see coordinated efforts to make it work,” an official with the forest department said.
Official sources said the wetland is facing problems, including encroachments, drainage of untreated and toxic industrial effluents of cities into it. Besides being home to thousands of migratory and local migratory populations of avians, it is also a natural habitat for several species of turtles, snakes and fish.
Congress MLA from Ferozepur City Parminder Singh Pinky said efforts were on to attract visitors to Ferozepur disitrict that houses a memorial, where legendary freedom fighters Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were cremated.
“Infrastructure is being created in Ferozepur for convenience of tourists to the historic gurdwara built in the memory of 21 Sikh soldiers of the Saragarhi battle fought during the British period in 1897. Retreat ceremony by soldiers at India-Pakistan border at Hussaniwala is also being promoted as a tourist must-do,” said Pinky, who has been instrumental refurbishing these projects.
