From poormayank@YAHOO.COM Mon Feb 28 12:31:31 2005
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 19:58:57 +0530
From: Mayank Bhatnagar 
To: nathistory-india@Princeton.EDU
Subject: Article: Fresh water can save Keoladeo Park

 From the pages of The Hindu
Sun, 20th February 2005
http://www.hindu.com/2005/02/20/stories/2005022003190500.htm

Fresh water can save Keoladeo Park

By Our Special Correspondent

JAIPUR, FEB. 19. The Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur - withering
away due to scarcity of water - can be saved from extinction only by a
fresh infusion of water from the Panchana dam on Gambhiri river flowing
100 km away from the unique birds sanctuary. The delay in the release
of water from this traditional source would prove disastrous for the
bird habitat.

This was the consensus among the speakers at a dialogue on the current
state of Keoladeo National Park organised here today by the Tourism and
Wildlife Society of India (TWSI). Journalists, intellectuals and two
members of the Rajasthan Assembly, addressing the open forum, expressed
concern over the threat of extinction looming large over the sanctuary
recognised by the UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

The Rajasthan Government's Irrigation Department has expressed its
inability to release water from the dam for the sanctuary and told the
Central Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court that it was "not
feasible". As an alternative, another project for supplying water from
Chambal river to the park through a pipeline has been suggested. The
project is likely to take a year and a half for completion.

The participants in the dialogue underlined the need to release water
immediately to ensure the survival of the fragile eco-system in the
sanctuary threatened by drying up of the shallow lake spread in an
11-km area. It was pointed out that the farmers' agitation for
reserving the entire water in Panchana dam for irrigation was
unwarranted.

C.K. Naidu, Resident Editor of The Hindustan Times, said the political
priorities had put the social issues in the background, leaving it to
the media to play a meaningful role to help evolve a solution to the
crisis caused essentially by the State Government's refusal to meet the
needs of the sanctuary and farmers' lobbying.

Narain Bareth, British Broadcasting Corporation's correspondent in
Jaipur, said the threat to the survival of the park had been caused by
mismanagement in the distribution of water. The awareness about
environmental issues would help tackle the danger to flora and fauna in
the three major reserves of Keoladeo, Sariska and Ranthambhore in the
State, he added.Sunny Sebastian, of The Hindu, said the decline in the
population of a variety of birds in Keoladeo was gradual, while the
texture of soil had changed from wetland to grass and dry land. "With
the State Government playing safe, it is the joint responsibility of
media and environmentalists to treat it as a national issue and make
all-out attempts for the park's conservation," he said.

The Congress MLAs, Chandrashekhar Baid and Harimohan Sharma, said they
would form a group of like-minded MLAs and raise the issue both within
and outside the Assembly. The honorary secretary of Rajasthan Chamber
of Commerce and Industry, K.L. Jain, said the wildlife reserves were
nature's gifts to the State for tourism and should be safeguarded at
all costs.

The speakers also pointed out that the proposed project bringing water
from Chambal by pipeline would not save the park as birds needed live
feed that only the flowing water could bring in. Besides, the
destruction of Keoladeo would ruin the local economy and deprive
thousands of people of their livelihood during the tourist season. A
slide show presented on the occasion depicted the birds regularly
spotted in Keoladeo earlier.

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