Once known for serene hilly landscape, eye-catching coffee estates and its sacred groves, Kodagu is now in ruins. One of the smallest districts in Karnataka, where the river Cauvery originates from, the entire district is now reeling from the disaster of some kind. We have seen how Kodagu district has faced climatic catastrophes like heavy rains, flooding, landslides etc since 2018 which has caused enough misery and all responsible persons have gone scot-free. Vested interests, petrified behaviour of some of the top brass of the forest department has incurred a lot of criticism from activists, experts, environmental and social groups and of course, the people. What should have been our forest wealth and what is today needs to be questioned and pondered upon again and again.
Kodagu is always known for its dense forest cover and the exotic flora and fauna found here. Deforestation has been happening over the decades due to human incursions into the western ghats for reasons like road construction, power transmission, stone quarrying, sand mining, change of land use from forest to agriculture or human settlement, tourism etc. Besides affecting rainfall patterns, deforestation in Kodagu seriously affects the surface and subsoil water capacity of the Cauvery River basin, which poses a threat to water security. Forest officers, in connivance with revenue officers and police, have plundered the tree growth from private land, illegally from notified forests.
Government cut trees in the forests, allows timber smuggling because some of them benefit. They change laws to make it easier to cut more varieties of trees. They give forest land to vote bank migrants. They give permission to build houses in places where they should not be built. They allowed 54,000 trees here to put a high-tension power line to Kerala of no benefit to us. They want two railway tracks and six lane highways to promote tourism and business in a river catchment area which needs cutting lakhs of trees.
For years we have been blind to the absence of rules and laws pertaining to land. The existing land laws are very ambiguous and do not support environmental protection. It is high time we realise that we should respect and value our land and not let our greed and mindless need for development. Forest officers and politicians are always been violating environmental laws.
They have deliberately not followed the inter- departmental coordination and plundered the tree growth in Kodagu which is already facing numerous environmental challenges, particularly from illegal tree cutting. Kodagu has already lost 30 percent tree cover in the past 40 years. Further issues like timber merchant lobby, man – animal conflict, dry rivers, land use changes, degradation of natural forests, depletion of ground water resources are some of the pressures calling for attention to save this landscape. No action was ever taken on defaulting forest officers. As a result, officers were emboldened and plundering of forests continued through which they committed irregularities deliberately in plundering the tree growth of the district.
The greed by the timber lobby to loot and the developers of commercial activity in and around the western ghats etc needs to be stopped once for all. Tree felling in the name of development should be prevented and the offenders must be punished also plenty of endemic species of saplings should be taken up on all the deforested slopes.
All infrastructure projects which threaten the ecology of western ghats must come to an end. Huge hills are razed for residential layouts, hundreds of trees are cut down and made invisible,in which the owner of the land claims to be a private land destroying huge number of trees. Apart from this, the permission of the forest department has not been obtained for the cutting of these trees. Scientists warn that the cause for this disaster is excessive human intervention on nature. However, amidst this warning, there is a continuous attack on nature in the district.
Every year in Kodagu hundreds of trees are cut and the hilly terrain has been relentlessly carved to create a resort or a layout without proper authorisation, further to remove evidence of the destruction of trees, the base of the trees are uprooted and the gaping holes are levelled in mud. There was a time when the ridges of the hills surrounding the town weren’t visible due to the hidden trees. Slowly, but progressively, the trees have disappeared giving space for ugly structures. Why is the administration unable to curb unplanned constructions even though it is aware of this? Why aren’t these violators booked? How is the permit given to build after chopping huge number of trees? All these questions remain unanswered as this has a huge political background. Everything we are told is being done for development.
But how long can we keep quiet when our nature is sold for money ?
