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‘A miracle that Sanjay Gandhi National Park is still surviving’

One of just four national parks in the world to be located in a metropolis, the Sanjay Gandhi National Park faces challenges ranging from encroachments to man-animal conflicts. The park’s director Anwar Ahmed tells The Indian Express what’s making a difference.

Sanjay Gandhi National Park, national park, park director, Anwar Ahmed, mumbai, mumbai news, indian express news Anwar Ahmed. (Express photo by Dilip Kagda)

SGNP is the only urban national park in the country, but how does it compare with the other national parks?
SGNP is known to be the most difficult national park to manage because we do not just have to manage the wildlife population but also the human population. It is really tough with the amount of pressure that this small landmass of 103 sq km faces in the midst of a population of 22 million people. And you have 1,300 species of plants here, about 50 species of mammals and reptiles, 250 species of birds and the highest density of carnivores in the world, with 41 leopards. There are only four such metropolises which have a national park but unlike the others where the parks are at one side of the city, SGNP is right in the centre and the biodiversity here is much more than the others. The other parks are in South Africa, Kenya and Brazil. The South African one has about 600 species of plants, which is half of what we have and not as many animals as we have. So it is a miracle that SGNP is still surviving and hats off to the forest officers.

The park has one of the highest density of leopards, yet the man-animal conflict has been managed very well. What have you done different from the others?
I think the basic reason for this becoming successful has been the openness of the park and its officers in involving people who are affected. Our collaboration with the NGO Mumbaikars For SGNP has been a great help because the forest department has always been looked upon by the general public as the uniformed staff. This changed when the NGO came in and we thought we should be more vocal with the people and we involved the press. We also started teaching the affected people who live on the periphery of the park to protect themselves. We had regular interactions with the society, schools, police and everyone concerned, and this has made a lot of difference.

Some forest fires were found to be deliberate. What is the impact of these fires and what steps are you taking to prevent such incidents?
Fortunately, all the fires are ground fires where the damage to the trees is not much. These are different from the fires that happen in temperate countries where you have coniferous forests. Here we have deciduous forests where the tree doesn’t burn as much unless the fire goes out of control. Big mammals do not get caught in the fire as they run away but insects, butterflies and small rodents get burnt. There are two things to be done – prevention and education. For prevention, we divide the forest in small areas/compartments wherein we have firelines traced along their boundaries. The fireline is created by clearing the grass and burning the ground for six to 10 metres around the area without affecting the trees. The burning takes care of the debris and does not allow the fire to spread. SGNP would have approximately 126 km of fireline and this we do along the roadside also.

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But 97 per cent of the fires are man-made. The major reason for fire in SGNP is due to ‘rab burning’. Just before summer begins, the remaining crop on the field adjacent to the park is burnt as the ash fertilises the field. It is good for agriculture but what is wrong is that they do not make a fireline around their field before doing it inside the forest. During the onset of summer there is a huge amount of wind blowing and that wind carries the fire inside the forest. Here we need to educate people on the bad effects of fire.

Last year, we purchased modern tools to fight the fires, fire rakes, backpack pumps, fire beaters, shovels and fire-resistant clothing for officers. We have made hotshot crews and deployed crews of 15 people at one spot. But first we need to detect them early. From next year, we will have a system in place where on high-altitude points we will construct watchtowers and place ‘Osborne Fire Finders’. This is a roundtable which will be calibrated from 0-360 degrees, with a moveable ring, an eyepiece and a scale. The coordinates will be conveyed to the fire control room and the hotshot crew closest to the area will be sent to the spot.

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When we say that most of the fires are man-made, can stricter norms prevent the entry of people?
The national park has a recreation area where we cannot prevent people from entering. Also there are people living inside the area as encroachments and tribal padas. We are looking at ways to curb the encroachments. A High Court order had clearly laid out that eligible encroachers be shifted out and those not eligible evicted. We have around 25,000 eligible encroachments. The SRA had taken a private area outside the national park and gave the work to two contractors. One has completed his share of about 12,000 tenements and we have allotted them. But the remaining 13,000 that remain have been hit by a hurdle: the work has been stopped by the airport authority as it comes in the funnel of the airport. To ensure that new encroachments do not come up we have mapped all those who were there till 2015 and have maintained data records.

As the government plans more infrastructure projects near SGNP, what is the impact on animals and what will the cumulative impact of these projects be on the environment?
Any project which goes through a national park will be violative to the wildlife but then you have to take a call where development also happens and wildlife is also protected. Then there are certain ways of mitigating the losses that it may bring. So when a proposal for a project comes up there is a system laid out. They have to make proposals under the Forest Conservation Act and it has to go to the State Wildlife Board and then to the National Wildlife Board and in the case of a national park they also have to seek permission from the Supreme Court. For all these things we have an Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Report and if that sees that such a loss might occur it gives some mitigation measures. The Virar-Alibaug Multimodal corridor divides the corridor between SGNP and Tungareshwar into two. Many wildlife migrate into Tungareshwar sanctuary through the corridor. We are planning overpasses on
the road for the crossing of wildlife. In another project, we are trying to create green corridors over the project so that animals have a passageway to cross over.

First uploaded on: 07-05-2018 at 01:23 IST
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