Save Kaziranga

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has sounded an alert regarding the future of Kaziranga National Park. 

North East News Agency

Kaziranga’s conservation success story has now a question mark over it. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the UNESCO has sounded an alert regarding the future of Kaziranga National Park.

The organizations have warned that the survival of this world heritage site would depend on changes taking place such as erosion, encroachment and construction. It viewed that such changes should not have an impact on Kaziranga’s inherent characteristics. The report has been prepared by a four year UNESCO/IUCN project funded by the UN foundations – Enhancing our Heritage and Managing for Success in world Natural Heritage Sites. The report said that continued survival of various species within the National Park over the next century and consolidation of conservation success achieved in the past 100 years will depend to a large extent on what happens beyond the boundary of the park.

The major problem facing Kaziranga is that most of National Park is within the floodplain of the Brahmaputra. The park is thus prone to upstream threats such as pollution and any change in the river’s flow caused by changing land use practices such as deforestation and form possible hydel power and flood control projects. The report wants strategies chalked out to stabilize riverbanks and thereby decrease the likelihood of erosion.

The UNESCO/IUCN study has also revealed that poachers outnumber forest guards in the park. The report has asked for a full review of the manpower requirement of the National Park in view of the changed ground realities. The primary reason for the manpower crunch is the government’s failure to fill vacancies. The report points out that the addition of more areas to the park has made it very difficult to control poaching.

The report says that anti-poaching infrastructure in new additions and reserve forest is highly inadequate and practically non existent in many areas. Moreover, the protection activists on the north bank of River Brahmaputra cannot be effectively supervised from the administrative headquarters along the southern boundary of the park due to difficulty of immediate access.

But both UNESCO and IUCN acknowledge that overall the incidents of poaching have come down in recent times. The credit for it goes to villagers residing on the fringes of the park. The forest department has also officially acknowledged that poaching could not have been checked without the participation of villagers in the campaign. It otherwise becomes a Herculean task for the forest guards to track poachers in such a vast area as Kaziranga National Park, whose territory increased to 840 sq. km. from 450 sq. km. after the addition of new areas. The park has 500 odd guards at present. The report is alarming. Authorities should not take the task of saving century-old park lightly.

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