CHENNAI: Allaying fears of ecological damage inside the Kanniyakumari Wildlife Sanctuary, where the Forest department has proposed to carry out massive clean-up drive to remove dead wind-fallen trees, Forest Secretary Shambhu Kallolikar clarified that not all fallen trees would be removed. “A scientific approach will be adopted to decide which trees can be removed. The trees that aid forest regeneration will not be touched.”
Speaking to Express after launching the Wildlife Week celebrations alongside Forest Minister Dindigul C Sreenivasan at the Guindy Children’s Park, Kallolikar said there was a set procedure to remove the dead trees. The foresters will conduct a detailed survey enumerating the number of uprooted and wind-fallen trees inside the sanctuary during the Ockhi cyclone. “The trees that are inaccessible areas and safe to be removed from the ecology point of view will only be cleared,” he said.
Express on Tuesday reported about the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) giving clearance for the Tamil Nadu Forest department to remove auction over 10,000 trees wind-fallen and uprooted during the Ockhi cyclone, to which the wildlife conversationalists have objected, saying it would cause an anthropogenic disturbance.
Also, activists claim the fallen trees’ number is much more than the initial count presented by the State Board for Wildlife before NBWL.
Chief Wildlife Warden TP Raghunath said this was a unique case and a first in the country where the department was permitted to use the revenue generated from the forest produce for benefit of locals and conservation of Kanniyakumari Wildlife Sanctuary and adjoining forests.
“Under Section 29 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, forest produce removed from a sanctuary should be used for meeting the personal bona fide needs of the people and shall not be used for any commercial purpose. However, in this case, the amount generated will be huge as we are talking about thousands of trees, so we requested the Union Environment Ministry to take a policy decision and allow us to pump in the money for the conservation of sanctuary,” Raghunath said.