Gurgaon: Wildlife safety on agenda as activists meet minister today

Activists claimed there has been a rise in poaching cases in the Aravallis

A group of activists will meet the Haryana’s forest and wildlife minister Rao Narbir Singh in Gurgaon on Saturday with a view to ensuring the safety of wildlife in the Aravallis.

The meeting will take place in the backdrop of a rise in poaching in the Aravallis. (Sanjeev Verma/HT FILE)

The meeting will take place in the backdrop of a rise in incidents of poaching in the region. Activists, who claimed a spike in poaching in the Aravallis in the recent past, met Union environment minister Harsh Vardhan in Delhi on December 29, urging him to act against poachers.

“Several poaching cases in the Aravallis of late have come to light. We are probing these cases and have already alerted the forest department about the state of wildlife in the Aravallis. Although we were assured of more patrolling by the forest department, nothing has been done so far,” Vaishali Rana Chandra, an environmentalist, said.

Vivek Kamboj, another environment activist, recently wrote to Chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar claiming an increase in unauthorised tree felling, land clearing, encroachments, building walls and even road construction in parts of the Aravallis in Gurgaon and Faridabad. He said the real estate mafia is having a free run in the region.

His letter also had reference to the issue of Mangar Bani not yet been included as protected forest in the sub-regional plan.

“Your helicopter inspection of the Aravallis in June 2015 and the welcome subsequent steps to protect the Mangar Bani raised our hope that you would change the unwritten policy of earlier governments and work to conserve the Aravallis. We are still waiting (sic),” the letter reads.

Read I Aravalli poaching complaint at Union minister’s door

Voicing concern over the rise in poaching cases in the Aravallis, Col (retd) SS Oberai, an environmentalist, said, “To our dismay, we have learned that the deployment of local forest watchers in parts of the Aravallis in Gurgaon and Faridabad has been done away with. While more than half the watchers have been laid off, the majority of tent checkpoints that had been erected to keep watch has been dismantled. The real estate mafia is literally having a free run in the Aravallis, chopping trees, building walls and constructing roads with impunity. Even poachers are striking at will.”

Forest department officials said they will look into complaints of poaching and tree felling in the Aravallis. “We will send our teams to investigate. We will comb the area where these incidents have been reported,” BS Khokha, divisional forest officer, Gurgaon, said.

On December 9, a resident moved a complaint alleging poaching in the Aravallis, near Tata Raisina Residency on Golf Course Extension Road. Another resident wrote to the state government and the forest department on December 17, seeking action against people involved in rampant poaching in the forested terrain.