Editorial
A step in the right direction
No handle should be given to environmental degradation
It is good to see the government taking note of an environmental concern aired through a report in this paper followed by an editorial over clearances given for industries to be set up in Bhawal National Park in breach of existing laws. What is more to the point is that the government has reacted promptly to the protestations by reimposing the ban on establishing industries or erecting other structures on 2500acres of private lands inside the national park.
While this should stave off setting up of any new industries, the fact is that it's not a clean slate we are writing on, as 300 illegally set up industries already exist there. These are undoubtedly posing enormous environmental hazards to the natural environment of the forest and its surrounding areas. So, the reimposed ban for all practical purposes, should be directed against these industries and other illegal structures.
There is no gainsaying the fact that a carnivorous appetite for pristine land has been the trade mark of influential people over time and they have grabbed and encroached on these by inducing abuse of power to circumvent laws. Whereas ideally forests should cover 25 percent land area of a country in order that it strikes the right degree of ecological balance and bio-diversity, in our unfortunate land the coverage of the wooded area is six to eight percent.
We, therefore, face a formidable challenge, all the more compounded by the predicted adverse effects of climate change, of expanding the tree cover at a fast pace. In this campaign the first axe should fall on the encroachers and grabbers and that is what the government appears to be doing but it must be at it persistently till the endangered forests and wetlands have been substantially reclaimed. In such a scheme of things, the importance of letting such a huge forest land as the Bhawal National Park breathe freely can hardly be overemphasised.
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