Conservationists in India and many from Assam, have sought better protection for the Dehing Patkai Elephant Reserve (DPER) that encompasses the country’s largest subtropical rainforest but is at risk by coal mining and other human activity.
The rainforest makes up 111.19 sq km of the Dehing Patkai Wildlife Sanctuary, which the Assam government has decided to upgrade to a national park. However, the 937 sq km DPER includes British era collieries and the oil refinery town of Digboi in eastern Assam.
“Since 1994, various organisations, activists and serving and retired forest officials have been demanding the status of national park for an estimated area of 500 sq. km. Their efforts seemed to bear fruit when Dehing Patkai was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 2004,” says a letter from a group of 1,427 conservationists, including scientists, academicians and students, to Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and Forest Minister Parimal Suklabaidya.
“But to their utter dismay, it (wildlife sanctuary) covered an area of only 111.19 sq km, leaving other areas proposed,” the letter pointed out, adding that only 12% of the DPER is currently protected.
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Illegal activities such as felling of trees, poaching, encroachment and coal mining have been a serious threat to the unprotected landscape, the conservationists said.
The group said restricting the area of the rainforest, often referred to as the ‘Amazon of the East’, to almost a fifth of its initially proposed size “proved to be a major concern pertaining to conservation threats along with increasingly-fragmented habitats, poaching and human-wildlife conflicts”.
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Studies conducted through camera trap revealed the presence of Schedule-I and endangered species such as tigers, clouded leopards, Asiatic golden cats, marbled cats and the Malayan sun bears, the conservationists said.
The areas outside the sanctuary have a viable population of arboreal primate species including western Hoolock Gibbon and the Bengal slow loris, they added.
“A proper scientific assessment should be done by experts in consultations with people living in and around the sanctuary and the nearby reserve forests. Public hearing is essential for proper demarcation and upgrading of the protection of DPER,” the group said.
