Odisha: Phailin-hit Chilika may take years to recover

The high winds and gushing sea that Cyclone Phailin brought to Chilika Lake, India’s largest coastal lagoon and home to a large number of endangered animal and plant species, have hit the eco-system that may take years to rejuvenate. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Oct 17, 2013, 01:24:01 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Chilika (Odisha)

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The high winds and gushing sea that Cyclone Phailin brought to Chilika Lake, India’s largest coastal lagoon and home to a large number of endangered animal and plant species, have hit the eco-system that may take years to rejuvenate.

The largest brackish lake in the sub-continent, Chilika is the wintering ground for almost a million birds and is only one of the two lagoons in the world to support Irrqwaddy Dolphin population. More than 200,000 people earn their living from fishing in the lake spread over the Puri, Khurda and Ganjam districts.

Even before the cyclone, the lake has been under great deal of stress, battling shrinking area, sedimentation and commercial prawn-farming to name a few.

The huge surge of water from the Bay of Bengal has played havoc with mangroves, which prevent the saline sea water from going inland and also check coastal erosion, along the Odisha coastline.

“Mangroves have been uprooted for kilometers,” said a forest officer at Chilika.

Because of their unique location between land and sea, these salt tolerant evergreen forests have one of the most diverse ecosystems.

On land, trees as far as five km off the sea coast are all bent in one direction, whipped by 200-220 km per hour wind speed packed by Phailin.

Most of them would wither away, said another forest official when asked if the damage could be contained. “We will have to start afresh,” he said.

While wind played havoc with mangroves, sea water has left vast stretches of land unsuitable for trees or wild plants. “In the coming days many trees where soil has turned saline will dry up,” said a professor at Odisha Agriculture Technical University, Bhubaneshwar.

Too much salt interferes with the water balance as well as soil nutrients. The professor, who didn’t wish to be identified, said desalination would have to be undertaken at earliest to ready the soil for new plants.

Though Phailin spared Chilika’s most famous residents — the dolphins, there are a few concerns.

“Strong tides and sea water can further acidify the lake water. If that happens, it will have a big impact of aquatic life,” a forest department official said.

But they want to wait for the rain to stop before making an assessment.

The Ganjam district, which took the maximum pounding when the state was hit by the country’s worst cyclone in 14 years, is also the favoured nesting ground of the endangered olive ridley turtles. The cyclone will have no impact on the nesting season.

“There are still four months for the turtles to come,” said Biswajit Mohanty of Odisha Wildlife Conservation Society.

With inputs from Priya Ranjan Sahu

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

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk LIVE and more across India.