conservation of western ghats
More like rolling hills than snow-covered mountains, the Western Ghats - stretching some 1,600km from the north of Mumbai to the southern tip of India - is a biodiversity hotspot that contains a large proportion of the country's plant and animal species; many of which are only found here and nowhere else in the world.
As gandhiji said-“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.”
The Western Ghats were once covered in dense forests. Today, a large part of the range has been converted to agricultural land for tea, coffee, rubber and oil palm, cleared for livestock grazing, reservoirs and roads.The growth of populations around protected areas and other forests has also led to habitat destruction, increased fragmentation, wildlife poaching and human-wildlife conflict.
The ministry of envt and forest appointed the gadgil comite in order to bring up why and how we need to conserve western ghats.
The comite came up with the issues that Over the last half a century of unbridled encroachment and plunder by forest mafia, mine-quarry mafia, land and real estate mafias , more than 40 percent of the forests including very rare flora and fauna of this region which is accorded World Heritage Status by IUCN has been destroyed beyond redemption, even as the Constitutional rights of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest-Dwellers are violated.
Where as another comite headed by kasturirangan reported that-“It is not possible to plan for Western Ghats, only as a fenced-in zone, with no human influence.” the human influence has enriched more than it had degraded the biological richness of the Western Ghats .“People living within the rich biodiversity have nurtured nature. They must benefit from conservation,”
Well be it gadgil report or kasturirangan report let me tell you that -The extremely fragile Western Ghats region is highly prone to natural calamities and chances of an Uttarakhand-like tragedy in the region cannot be ruled
As gandhiji said-“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.”
The Western Ghats were once covered in dense forests. Today, a large part of the range has been converted to agricultural land for tea, coffee, rubber and oil palm, cleared for livestock grazing, reservoirs and roads.The growth of populations around protected areas and other forests has also led to habitat destruction, increased fragmentation, wildlife poaching and human-wildlife conflict.
The ministry of envt and forest appointed the gadgil comite in order to bring up why and how we need to conserve western ghats.
The comite came up with the issues that Over the last half a century of unbridled encroachment and plunder by forest mafia, mine-quarry mafia, land and real estate mafias , more than 40 percent of the forests including very rare flora and fauna of this region which is accorded World Heritage Status by IUCN has been destroyed beyond redemption, even as the Constitutional rights of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest-Dwellers are violated.
Where as another comite headed by kasturirangan reported that-“It is not possible to plan for Western Ghats, only as a fenced-in zone, with no human influence.” the human influence has enriched more than it had degraded the biological richness of the Western Ghats .“People living within the rich biodiversity have nurtured nature. They must benefit from conservation,”
Well be it gadgil report or kasturirangan report let me tell you that -The extremely fragile Western Ghats region is highly prone to natural calamities and chances of an Uttarakhand-like tragedy in the region cannot be ruled