Gautam Pandey
In Kerala, as elsewhere, pristine forests are being fragmented and destroyed by activities like plantation, mining and farming. The needs of development have to be balanced with the importance of protecting the endangered green cover. Without the latter, nothing will remain
With an opportunity to travel through Kerala for over 20 days by road for work was more than a dream come true. My first trip to ‘God’s own country’ was due and I couldn’t wait to explore the backwaters and rainforests of Kerala. To make up for lost time I decided to drive through the State starting from the southern tip and fly to Thiruvanathapuram, a sea of green stretch below me. I planned to drive through the State zig-zagging my way and heading north.
I was a little unprepared as my ‘first impressions’ hit me. It was hard to tell when exactly I crossed the city and when a town began. The entire stretch seemed urbanised with villages and towns merging into one and other.
After a couple of hours of driving, I reached greener areas with old growth mixed forests on both sides of the road. These were the primal rainforests I had been waiting for. As I drove on and my eyes got used to the explosion of green all around me, I gradually realised that while there was prime forest, it was fragmented — stitched together by plantations. After I saw one plantation, I kept seeing them everywhere. Rubber, spices, tea, and coconut plantations were seamlessly interwoven with the forest. This was an illusion. What seemed green and healthy was actually a heavily fragmented and stressed environment.
I reached Munnar where entire hills as far as the eye could see had been shaved off prime forest and had tea planted on them. How ironic it was to see people getting their photographs taken with the Munnar hills as a backdrop. The whole situation felt more like a ticking bomb than ‘God’s own country’.
The majority of the world’s biodiversity hotspots are located in tropical forests. The Western Ghats are a prime example of a tropical biodiversity hot spot which is home to numerous endemic species. Unfortunately what has happened in Kerala is evident through out the entire Western Ghats. Plantations, mining and construction have fragmented and split our forests like a piece of shattered glass. While some patches can be large and sustain a degree of biodiversity, the majority gradually become degraded with some forests altogether disappearing.
India has had a long tradition of conservation and the sacred groves were one such method of conservation. A forested area often with streams and lakes was believed to have a resident deity and considered sacred. No one was permitted to cut, kill, or take anything from a scared grove. Some groves are even out of bounds for humans. Sacred groves are like banks of bio-diversity left untouched and pure. In some areas so strong is the belief that people passing through and exiting a grove would dust their body and clothes just incase they don’t carry anything out of the forest.
With big money backing the mining industry, these groves aren’t spared either. Recently while filming in Goa we visited a sacred grove which was on the list to be mined. The forest was unspoiled with a pristine stream flowing out from under the roots of a gigantic tree. We drank the water and rested there. It was hard to imagine that in a matter everything here would just be scraped away leaving the red earth exposed like a big open wound. The mining industry was destroying prime forests and fresh water sources. While announcements to control the mining have been made and some mines closed down, the reality is quite different. A few weeks back our crew was attacked by mining mafia goons and it was forced to destroy all the footage. The situation in Goa’s forests is so bad that experts foresee a huge freshwater crisis in the State within the next few years.
What is a little confusing is, that while experts and researchers raise alarm bells about the state of forests the Forest Survey of India has actually declared that India’s forest cover has been increasing for the last 13 years, with a net addition of 1,128 sq km, or 0.16 per cent, in the last two years. This was indeed good news, what with all the carbon credits, global warming and climate change issues, except for one little fact.
The very definition of ‘forest cover’ by the FSI is that if tree canopy covers more than 10 per cent of a one hectare plot, it can be classified as a forest. Since satellite images are used to determine ‘forest cover’ all mono culture plantations including tea, coffee, rubber, timber etc qualify as a forest.
Recently, researchers Priya Davidar, Jean-Philippe Puyravaud and William F Laurance argued in a paper they presented that the FSI used computer software that couldn’t distinguish between natural forests and plantations. Based on their ground research what has now been revealed is truly frightening. Rather than expanding, India’s forests have been shrinking by 1.5 per cent to 2.7 per cent per year since the last two decades.
This is a very high rate of forest loss and India is at risk of losing the majority of her forests within the next few decades. With rapidly shrinking and fragmented forests diversity and number of species will continuously reduce.
Fragmented forests result in a large number of wild animal deaths every year. Animals, both large and small, move and migrate between forests and many are run over, killed, separated and sometimes poached as they leave the forest and cross inhabited areas. Not only are the animals directly affected, but it is also the health of the forest itself which suffers. Animals are natural seed dispersers and with restricted movement plant species are also affected. In tropical forests this movement of plants and animals plays a crucial role and maintains a high level of biodiversity. It has been observed that in isolated forests biodiversity degrades over time with some species becoming extinct locally.
With roads, railway lines, fields and plantations separating forest areas, animals have no choice but to cross these man-made barriers. The result is road deaths and often man-animal conflicts, with casualties on both sides. Moreover, as a fragmented forest gets smaller and further fragmented, the population of animals and insects falls, resulting at times even in the extinction of a species locally.
On the upside, what we have now is a lot of comprehensive and conclusive research. The time for action is now. Driving through Kerala I eventually landed up at The Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary where a committed and passionate group of residents, gardeners, naturalists and educators with love for nature have been working towards habitat restoration in degraded areas of the Western Ghats. The sanctuary itself is on the border of a large rainforest reserve and was actually a reclaimed plantation. Through some planning, but with most of the healing left to nature the forest over 30 years has come back, and along with it so have the insects, birds, reptiles and mammals.
Hopefully, with just a little foresight and common sense, we just might be able to save what was never really ours to destroy.
(The writer is a wildlife filmmaker)
Source: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/53040-not-as-green-as-they-first-appear.html
In Kerala, as elsewhere, pristine forests are being fragmented and destroyed by activities like plantation, mining and farming. The needs of development have to be balanced with the importance of protecting the endangered green cover. Without the latter, nothing will remain
With an opportunity to travel through Kerala for over 20 days by road for work was more than a dream come true. My first trip to ‘God’s own country’ was due and I couldn’t wait to explore the backwaters and rainforests of Kerala. To make up for lost time I decided to drive through the State starting from the southern tip and fly to Thiruvanathapuram, a sea of green stretch below me. I planned to drive through the State zig-zagging my way and heading north.
I was a little unprepared as my ‘first impressions’ hit me. It was hard to tell when exactly I crossed the city and when a town began. The entire stretch seemed urbanised with villages and towns merging into one and other.
After a couple of hours of driving, I reached greener areas with old growth mixed forests on both sides of the road. These were the primal rainforests I had been waiting for. As I drove on and my eyes got used to the explosion of green all around me, I gradually realised that while there was prime forest, it was fragmented — stitched together by plantations. After I saw one plantation, I kept seeing them everywhere. Rubber, spices, tea, and coconut plantations were seamlessly interwoven with the forest. This was an illusion. What seemed green and healthy was actually a heavily fragmented and stressed environment.
I reached Munnar where entire hills as far as the eye could see had been shaved off prime forest and had tea planted on them. How ironic it was to see people getting their photographs taken with the Munnar hills as a backdrop. The whole situation felt more like a ticking bomb than ‘God’s own country’.
The majority of the world’s biodiversity hotspots are located in tropical forests. The Western Ghats are a prime example of a tropical biodiversity hot spot which is home to numerous endemic species. Unfortunately what has happened in Kerala is evident through out the entire Western Ghats. Plantations, mining and construction have fragmented and split our forests like a piece of shattered glass. While some patches can be large and sustain a degree of biodiversity, the majority gradually become degraded with some forests altogether disappearing.
India has had a long tradition of conservation and the sacred groves were one such method of conservation. A forested area often with streams and lakes was believed to have a resident deity and considered sacred. No one was permitted to cut, kill, or take anything from a scared grove. Some groves are even out of bounds for humans. Sacred groves are like banks of bio-diversity left untouched and pure. In some areas so strong is the belief that people passing through and exiting a grove would dust their body and clothes just incase they don’t carry anything out of the forest.
With big money backing the mining industry, these groves aren’t spared either. Recently while filming in Goa we visited a sacred grove which was on the list to be mined. The forest was unspoiled with a pristine stream flowing out from under the roots of a gigantic tree. We drank the water and rested there. It was hard to imagine that in a matter everything here would just be scraped away leaving the red earth exposed like a big open wound. The mining industry was destroying prime forests and fresh water sources. While announcements to control the mining have been made and some mines closed down, the reality is quite different. A few weeks back our crew was attacked by mining mafia goons and it was forced to destroy all the footage. The situation in Goa’s forests is so bad that experts foresee a huge freshwater crisis in the State within the next few years.
What is a little confusing is, that while experts and researchers raise alarm bells about the state of forests the Forest Survey of India has actually declared that India’s forest cover has been increasing for the last 13 years, with a net addition of 1,128 sq km, or 0.16 per cent, in the last two years. This was indeed good news, what with all the carbon credits, global warming and climate change issues, except for one little fact.
The very definition of ‘forest cover’ by the FSI is that if tree canopy covers more than 10 per cent of a one hectare plot, it can be classified as a forest. Since satellite images are used to determine ‘forest cover’ all mono culture plantations including tea, coffee, rubber, timber etc qualify as a forest.
Recently, researchers Priya Davidar, Jean-Philippe Puyravaud and William F Laurance argued in a paper they presented that the FSI used computer software that couldn’t distinguish between natural forests and plantations. Based on their ground research what has now been revealed is truly frightening. Rather than expanding, India’s forests have been shrinking by 1.5 per cent to 2.7 per cent per year since the last two decades.
This is a very high rate of forest loss and India is at risk of losing the majority of her forests within the next few decades. With rapidly shrinking and fragmented forests diversity and number of species will continuously reduce.
Fragmented forests result in a large number of wild animal deaths every year. Animals, both large and small, move and migrate between forests and many are run over, killed, separated and sometimes poached as they leave the forest and cross inhabited areas. Not only are the animals directly affected, but it is also the health of the forest itself which suffers. Animals are natural seed dispersers and with restricted movement plant species are also affected. In tropical forests this movement of plants and animals plays a crucial role and maintains a high level of biodiversity. It has been observed that in isolated forests biodiversity degrades over time with some species becoming extinct locally.
With roads, railway lines, fields and plantations separating forest areas, animals have no choice but to cross these man-made barriers. The result is road deaths and often man-animal conflicts, with casualties on both sides. Moreover, as a fragmented forest gets smaller and further fragmented, the population of animals and insects falls, resulting at times even in the extinction of a species locally.
On the upside, what we have now is a lot of comprehensive and conclusive research. The time for action is now. Driving through Kerala I eventually landed up at The Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary where a committed and passionate group of residents, gardeners, naturalists and educators with love for nature have been working towards habitat restoration in degraded areas of the Western Ghats. The sanctuary itself is on the border of a large rainforest reserve and was actually a reclaimed plantation. Through some planning, but with most of the healing left to nature the forest over 30 years has come back, and along with it so have the insects, birds, reptiles and mammals.
Hopefully, with just a little foresight and common sense, we just might be able to save what was never really ours to destroy.
(The writer is a wildlife filmmaker)
Source: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/53040-not-as-green-as-they-first-appear.html
No comments:
Post a Comment