Park faces double peril

Dibru-Saikhowa National Park

Dibrugarh, July 22: Dibru-Saikhowa National Park has lost nearly half of its notified area to erosion and expanding human habitations in its core area during the past 15 years.

This was revealed during a study conducted by the divisional forest officer of Tinsukia wildlife division, Vaibhav C. Mathur, who analysed retrospective satellite imagery of the past 15 years obtained from the National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad.

The study revealed that the park’s area, as on January 30, 2011, was 242.7 square km.

This came as a disturbing revelation because the national park, located on the easternmost tip of Assam and spread across the twin districts of Dibrugarh and Tinsukia, had an original notified area of 340 square km.

“While the original perimeter of the park was 155 km, it is just 99.3km now. And this is just a part of the picture; effective habitat availability for wildlife is even lower, as out of the 242.7 square km available, 48.2 square km of the core area is occupied by the Laika and Dadhia forest villages, which are continually expanding,” Mathur said.

The national park has always been counted as a rich wildlife habitat and bio-diversity hotspot. Various animals apart, it also boasts of a good endemic and migratory avian population.

Birdwatcher and lecturer of Tinsukia College Ranjan Das, who has carried out extensive research on the birds of the park, has recorded 380 species, which include both wetland and grassland birds. The huge bird population also attracts a large number of domestic and foreign tourists to the park every year.

Mathur said the shrinkage in area would translate into very low crude density and an even lower ecological density of wildlife, as large parts of the available habitat were degraded because of grazing by livestock from the two villages.

Given the fact that nearly 2,000 families resided in the two villages, finding a commensurate rehabilitation package was easier said than done, sources said, adding that it was also alleged that residents of these two villages felled trees inside the park and aided poaching directly or indirectly, taking advantage of the abysmally low number of forest personnel protecting the area.

When people were allowed to settle there by the government in the 1950s, the area allotted to them was just 3.73 sq km. But now, they are occupying 20 per cent of the land left after erosion. Moreover, from the original figure of 75 families who were rehabilitated in Laika, the population has swollen to 958 families. Likewise, the population in Dadhia has grown from90 families to 1,207 families.

Numerous attempts have been made in the past by the Tinsukia district administration, with assistance from the forest department, to shift the two forest villages from the core area of the park. No plan, however, has materialised till now owing to a lack of consensus among the villagers.

According to wildlife rules, the core zone of a national park needs to be absolutely free from human habitation. But it seems that this norm was overlooked while according national park status to Dibru-Saikhowa in 1999.

“The officials engaged in the work might have ignored the presence of the two forest villages inside the core zone of Dibru-Saikhowa for reasons best known to them,” a source said.

“It is still a mystery as to how Dibru-Saikhowa was accorded the status of a national park without taking into consideration the existence of the two villages. The two villages have now become major threats to the existence of the park,” Nakul Khound, co-ordinator of Irab-Kirab, an environmental NGO, said, while demanding relocation of the two villages.

“The state government will have to draw up a comprehensive compensation package for the villagers before they are shifted,” Khound added.

The park, which is surrounded by six rivers — Lohit, Dibang and Disang on the north and Anantnala, Dangori and Dibru on the south — is also facing a major threat in the form of erosion by these rivers.

Mathur said, “While we have prescribed anti-erosion measures in our camp areas in our management plan, our energies are concentrated on achieving at least some level of protection with the 20-odd frontline staff trying to protect the 240 sq km that remains.”

In Kaziranga National Park, around 530 men guard the 1,000 sq km park — roughly translating into one frontline staff for every 1.8 sq km area. In Dibru-Saikhowa, however, there is only one guard for every 10 sq km.