Burning Issues - 3

Now it’s a tattered cloak of green

By Taya Diaz

What a pleas- ing picture - an expanse of lake; across, a long length of ridge cloaked in jungle; and beyond, a setting sun brushing bold strokes of colour on sky and lake as only evening light can do. This was Minneriya in all its glory!

Recently, I had the good fortune of flying low over this range on a reconnaissance tour. What I saw shocked me utterly. The sight shocked me in spite of my knowing its length and breadth for the last 17 years. Perhaps it was because I saw all the sins the area was subjected to in one sweeping glance.

What looked a cloak of green from afar, was nothing but a tattered and ragged thing. In this harsh August, the area was spangled with bare, dusty, patches as large as football fields. The vegetation was mostly a twiggy scatter with a sprinkle of trees, and, only occasionally, a rich blob of a grove.

This area of land was known by various names in recent years - a reflection of how fickle and fleeting conservation programmes and strategies are. To glean from the topographical map, even in the latest updated version, it is Minneriya - Giritale Sanctuary. To some, it was Minneriya Tank Reserve or Minneriya - Giritale Reserve. For a brief period it was even known as Minneriya- Giritale Reserve-3. Some parts of it were known as Man and Biosphere Reserve, Ambagaswewa Beat, proposed Gal Oya Forest Reserve.

All the while to the simple villager it was, and still is, the “Konduruwawa Kanda” where he grazed his cattle, felled trees, poached animals, slashed and burned a piece of jungle for sowing a seasonal crop or simply encroached to stake out a hut to eke out a living.

In recent years it is also a place where the monied and the influential do all that the humble villager did, but a few logarithmic notches up the ‘’Richter scale’’ of destruction.

And still recently, it was the official dump yard of the city garbage. And unofficially the yard for heaping paddy chaff of numerous paddy mills in the area.

It is also the place where the Department of Forests practises its agro forestry. For 30 years they have tried to grow teak here and failed, because of elephant attacks on the plantations. They are still at it, even moving onto new grounds.

Finally, to cap it all up, it is also the reserve where politicians carve out plots of land, to plant human settlements, particularly at election times to reap votes for themselves and propagate misery to beast and man.

Taking this entire dismal picture of Minneriya into consideration - of the ancient irrigation tank and of its catchment forests - the Central Environmental Authority launched a programme to save it in 1994.

It identified the problems and issues concerning the lake and reserve. The task force looked into the matter and just as it started to go about implementing protective strategies, at which time the funding was over, the projects stopped. With that the task force was made ‘’forceless’’. The officials went back to their departments - perhaps, to force their respective tasks!

The project also looked deeply into the human implication and involvements of conservation. Over the years droves of cottage industries have grown in and around this reserve. Fishing and cattle ranching are the key ones. Carpentry, which is legal and its supporting system - the illicit felling is another and a difficult combination to solve. Still, another occupation that is hard to address is the fuel wood extraction. These and many more involve multitude of people and livelihoods that cannot, by any means be ignored.

The drought mid last year turned all of Minneriya into a very dry place. Water for animals and a semblance of fodder were to be had, somewhat undisturbed by human interests only at Kirioya-Batuoya region of Minneriya tank. Elephant herds of the region congregated here.

Emerging from the scrub they studded the vast expanse of the dry lakebed to browse on grass cropped to a level of a lawn by grazing cattle. Herds with 30-40 individuals were a common sight.

Starved of National parks to go to, without the encumbrances of terrorists, tourists from here and abroad thronged to Minneriya. Elephant tour groups mushroomed. In the absence of regulations and control, the lakebed of Minneriya tank was an elephantine carnival with honking and tooting vehicles and stressed out animals in disarray.

But, in this mayhem I happened to see a strange thing. The village folk who lived immediately around the reserve, showed a new kind of interest in the jungle that engulfed their lives. For the first time they realized there is money in it other than poaching and felling. The habitual poacher became an instant tour guide to the city folk who flashed their wealth by the vehicles they came in. When I met these humble people I saw the glint of happiness in their eyes.

What the Department of Wildlife should have done was to whet this new appetite of the people. Regulate, certainly, the traffic of the visitors but not stop it. And also not take the venture off the hands of the people of the locality.

Sadly the department did exactly that. Grabbing all of the reserve from the people, they put a stop to all budding tour groups.They re-gazetted the area with new boundaries. Roadways were staked out through jungle patch - the little that was left. Bungalow sites demarcated. Entrances fixed to collect tolls from visitors.

All this hype of activity just on seeing the congregation of wild elephants that came to water at Minneriya in the drought of last year. Wildlife management!

No wonder our reserves are in the state they are in - doomed. This reserve with yet another name- Minneriya National Park will be opened soon.

Is it another name for a catastrophe we know of only too well?

More Plus * Majestic misery * Let’s get together to save them

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