Environmental organisations in Wayanad district have sought the government’s intervention to foil attempts by a private coffee estate management, with the alleged support of a few Forest and Revenue officials, to axe huge trees on the estate spread over 300 acres on the Brahmagiri Hills on the Kerala–Karnataka border.
N. Badusha, president, Wayanad Prakruthi Samrakshna Samiti, said that though the Forest department had stopped issuing permits to cut trees on the land of farmers after the massive rosewood tree felling came to light at Muttil in the district recently, tree felling was still going on in a private coffee estate on the slopes of the Brahmagiri Hills, a highly ecologically fragile area, with the support of a group of Forest and Revenue officials.
Nearly 100 acres of the estate is revenue land and a vast area of land adjacent to the estate bungalow is forest land. The felling of silver oak trees had been underway on the forest land too since area was yet to be demarcated, Mr. Badusha said.
During the colonial era, British planters possessed nearly 5,000 acres on the western slopes of the Brahmagiri Hills under the North Wayanad forest division and they developed the coffee plantations, Mr. Badusha said.
Now, the land is owned by nearly 20 estate owners. The Kerala High Court had issued a directive to the State government recently to retrieve the land owned by the British planters since the court found that such land transactions were null and void, he said.
A special officer was appointed to identify such land in the district and who had been collecting the details of such plantations.
A lobby, consisting of Revenue and Forest officials, as well as timber merchants and advocates, was very active in the district to plunder the wealth and they were mainly targeting the huge trees on the land planted by the British planters, he said.
Massive tree felling on nearly five coffee estates in the area was foiled after the intervention of environmental organisations and the public, he said.
