Great Himalayan National Park losing identity

The park is losing its identity because of excessive resource usage and pressure of development projects, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Oct 24, 2006, 22:54:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A jewel in the western Himalayan range—the Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP) in Himachal Pradesh—is losing its identity because of excessive resource usage and pressure of development projects, forcing the environment and forest ministry to refuse permission to the second phase of Parbati Hydro-electric Project.

The Wildlife Institute of India (WII) Dehradun has encompassed a sorry figure for the sanctuary saying that the population of many endangered species is declining.

Three Gyps vultures—white-backed, slender-billed and long-billed—have shown a drastic decline in their population, the report states.

Sighting of many other threatened species like Snow Leapord, Himalayan Brown Bear, Asiatic Black Bear, Himalayan Wolf, Tibetan Argali, Himalayan Musk Deer and Koklas has fallen in the state in recent years.

Forest cover in the area has also witnessed some decline.

The GHNP is spread over five wildlife-protected areas and three managed forests in the districts of Kanwar, Shimla and Kullu.

It also acts as a catchment area for two prominent rivers, Sutlej and Beas, apart from providing enormous potential for hydropower projects.

WII says that several sequential hydel projects have pumped a lot of money in the area, thus creating employment avenues, but has caused "irrecoverable" and "compounding" loss to the bio-diversity of the park.

The report terms the condition of the landscape in the park as 'grave'.

While suggesting that future hydel projects like phase two of Parbati Hydel Project should not be allowed without proper bio-diversity conservation plan, WII has estimated that Rs 54 crore will be required to rejuvenate the forest and wildlife area.

The institute has also recommended that forest rights of those living near the sanctuary should be restored and they should be allowed to participate in implementing the restoration plans.

The money should come from Parbati Hydel Project Corporation if it wants environment for the phase II, WII report states. The money should be provided to the Chief Wildlife Warden of Himachal to be spent in five constituent areas of the national park.

In the wake of WII report and its own survey, the ministry of environment and forest has refused environment clearance to the project for the time-being.

"The loss to ecology will be huge if clearance to phase-II is given in the present format," a senior environment ministry official said.

email id : chetan@hindustantimes.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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